The framers of the Constitution evidently believed that happiness could be achieved, putting its pursuit up there alongside the unalienable rights to life and liberty. Though governments since then have seen life and liberty as deserving of vigorous protection, for all the public policies aimed at increasing economic growth, people have been left to sort out their happiness.
This is an unfortunate omission. Despite all the wealth we have accumulated ”” increased life expectancy, central heating, plasma TVs and venti-white-chocolate-mocha Frappuccinos ”” true happiness has lagged our prosperity. As Bobby Kennedy said in a speech at the University of Kansas in March 1968, the nation’s gross national product measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”
The era of laissez-faire happiness might be coming to an end. Some prominent economists and psychologists are looking into ways to measure happiness to draw it into the public policy realm. Thirty years from now, reducing unhappiness could become another target of policy, like cutting poverty.
“This is another outcome that we should be concerned about,” said Alan Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton who is working to develop a measure of happiness that could be used with other economic indicators. “Just like G.D.P.”
More absolute piffle from the New York Times. Don’t these people have editors who know even basics about America? It was in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution you twits, and it wasn’t edited enough even to catch a flagrant error in the first line. Pitiful.
With ignorance of that magnitude the rest of the piece is worth than worthless.
More interestingly, ‘happy’ in the era of the Declaration was a common translation of ‘makarios,’ as in the Beatitudes “Happy are they …” Happiness generally tended to mean being in right relationship with God, [i]cf[/i] ‘Blessed’ as another common translation.
Two points: first, those who would measure (and seek to maximize) aggregate happiness should study the development of utilitarianism.. many of utilitarianism’s brightest proponents eventually despaired of resolving the incommensurability of different types of happiness [i]at the individual level[/i] much less in aggregate; second, when considering the happiest moments in life, how “indexable” are they, or even comparable? Could one make the statement, “The birth of my first child produced ten times the happiness as did the first time I ate a meal at a Alain Ducasse establishment?” However well-intentioned, these efforts are misguided at best.
Yes. Right . What we need is the government and the lawyers to define happiness and then create appropriate legislation. Groan.
There is a level of obtuseness – obtundity?- for which Amer ican has no word. We need a word that means “thickheaded, wrongheaded, and dangerous to touch.” LM