Time was on Mick Jagger’s side–what was his secret? Maybe his stint at the London School of Economics? And now another LSE hotshot has worked out the pie charts and standard deviations that might someday free all us overstressed workaholics to join a good loud chorus of “Time is on my side.”
Lord (Richard) Layard of the LSE has been telling the British government–and the world, in a series of popular lectures–that economic growth should learn to play second fiddle to human happiness. To quote the Guardian article:
Lord (Richard) Layard, the LSE’s director of the centre for economic performance, has this week delivered three startling lectures which question the supremacy of economics. It doesn’t work. Economies grow, GDP swells, but once above abject poverty, it makes no difference to citizens’ well-being. What is all this extra money for if it is now proved beyond doubt not to deliver greater happiness, nationally or individually? Happiness has not risen in western nations in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in wealth…
Money does matter in various ways. People earning under around £10,000 are measurably, permanently happier when paid more. It matters when people of any income feel a drop from what they have become used to. But above all, money makes people unhappy when they compare their own income with others’. Richer people are happier – but not because of the absolute size of their wealth, but because they have more than other people. But the wider the wealth gap, the worse it harms the rest. Rivalry in income makes those left behind more miserable that it confers extra happiness on the winners. In which case, he suggests, the winners deserve to be taxed more on the “polluter pays” principle: the rich are causing measurable unhappiness by getting out too far ahead of the rest, without doing themselves much good.
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Why We Work: US News and World Report cover story on how employers expand work into what used to be leisure. Excerpt:
“Hours have crept up partly as a consequence of the declining power of the trade-union movement,” says Cornell University labor historian Clete Daniel. “Many employers find it more economical to require mandatory overtime than hire new workers and pay their benefits.”
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The case for happiness (A shorter Guardian article summarizing Layard’s position). Extract:
What would generate more happiness? Less unemployment; safer communities; more harmonious relationships; and, importantly, much more widely available mental health treatment. Lord Layard rightly emphasised this last in his lectures: an illness which accounts for 50% of all measured disability, but which only receives 12% of NHS funds. The case is made; now for some action.
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Link to download Layard’s lectures. 1) What is Happiness and are we Getting Happier?2)
What Causes Happiness? Rethinking Public Economics
3) What would make a happier society?
If this keeps up, people might stop calling economics “the dismal science.” And we might not turn up the volume quite so loud on “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”