Colin Ferguson thoughts
A decade or so ago Bhutan said they'd start tracking Gross National Happiness. GNH, as it's called, is an attempt to measure the summed joy of a nation's citizens. It's meant to be an upgrade of the concept of Gross National Product. GNP is the measure of how much value is created by citizens of a nation. In this case,, instead of measuring the economy of a nation and all the things that money can buy money (and what money can buy) GNH measures how happy nations are. At least that's the concept. It's not exactly used in the real world yet - and for some valid reasons.
When I first hear of this I thought -- oh man, it's a way to avoid real issues from policy makers. As an economist I was trained in measuring everything in terms of money. And if it's not measured in money you can easily play with the numbers to get the results you want. Put another way, if an authoritarian government realised it can't boost material wealth it will try and focus on something else. Often that's finding a group to pick on, but hey, Bhutan is not really into warfare so why not try this and set it up so they can easily fudge the numbers?
I've grown a bit since then, and not just in girth. I realise that salaries in London, UK are twice what they are in most parts of Canada. That doesn't make them twice as happy. In fact more likely to be less happy as their uber-salaries get them much smaller places so they can't recover from the city stress. There are some great studies on this. It's also true that study after study show that folks with simpler lives have happier lives. Now that being said, I'm not throwing out our nations Protestant work ethic just yet. The old adages that "Money doesn't buy happiness" is true, although funds certainly lubricate the process. And it's pretty clear that the lack of money does create unhappiness. I'm sure we've all seen that before.
Anyway, my personal growth has me realise that when implemented well GNH would be a very positive thing that governments can do - in good times and bad. Including some level of priority for what actually makes folks happy into decision making could really shift how governments provide services. It'd have to be some fiendishly complex analysis as humans wants, desires and joys change depending on where and what they have, but it's just clever. During WWII, for example, most folks were not happy. No shock there. What is shocking is that once Europeans had some security, then had enough food to eat, plus some basic shelter then they were no longer unhappy due to physical wants. At that point happiness was found to be all about socio-economic rankings relative to your neighbours. We're such relics of our evolution.
Anyway, this knowledge is common place amongst eggheads, and so maybe it's time has come. After it's something that countries with low growth prospects and downsizing governments may be able to use to their advantage. And it seems the UK is now looking into tracking this. And that does make sense as they have years of budget cutting ahead of them; and it'll be nice for them to point at something other than hard numbers.
When I first hear of this I thought -- oh man, it's a way to avoid real issues from policy makers. As an economist I was trained in measuring everything in terms of money. And if it's not measured in money you can easily play with the numbers to get the results you want. Put another way, if an authoritarian government realised it can't boost material wealth it will try and focus on something else. Often that's finding a group to pick on, but hey, Bhutan is not really into warfare so why not try this and set it up so they can easily fudge the numbers?
I've grown a bit since then, and not just in girth. I realise that salaries in London, UK are twice what they are in most parts of Canada. That doesn't make them twice as happy. In fact more likely to be less happy as their uber-salaries get them much smaller places so they can't recover from the city stress. There are some great studies on this. It's also true that study after study show that folks with simpler lives have happier lives. Now that being said, I'm not throwing out our nations Protestant work ethic just yet. The old adages that "Money doesn't buy happiness" is true, although funds certainly lubricate the process. And it's pretty clear that the lack of money does create unhappiness. I'm sure we've all seen that before.
Anyway, my personal growth has me realise that when implemented well GNH would be a very positive thing that governments can do - in good times and bad. Including some level of priority for what actually makes folks happy into decision making could really shift how governments provide services. It'd have to be some fiendishly complex analysis as humans wants, desires and joys change depending on where and what they have, but it's just clever. During WWII, for example, most folks were not happy. No shock there. What is shocking is that once Europeans had some security, then had enough food to eat, plus some basic shelter then they were no longer unhappy due to physical wants. At that point happiness was found to be all about socio-economic rankings relative to your neighbours. We're such relics of our evolution.
Anyway, this knowledge is common place amongst eggheads, and so maybe it's time has come. After it's something that countries with low growth prospects and downsizing governments may be able to use to their advantage. And it seems the UK is now looking into tracking this. And that does make sense as they have years of budget cutting ahead of them; and it'll be nice for them to point at something other than hard numbers.
About the Author:
If you want to know more about Colin Ferguson go to his webpage here www.colin-ferguson.com
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