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regicide
Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Location: United States
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 Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:54 am Post subject: America's Pursuit Of Happiness |
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Investor's Business Daily
America's Pursuit Of Happiness
Wednesday January 2, 6:20 pm ET
Public Opinion: Each time you open a newspaper or turn on a TV, you'll hear how unhappy, glum and dissatisfied Americans are. Don't believe it. The U.S. is, to borrow a phrase, the happiest place on Earth.
A long-forgotten 1960s movie title pretty much sums up how Americans feel about their lives: "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" According to a new Gallup Poll, for most people that's not just a rhetorical question.
"Most Americans say they are generally happy, with a slim majority saying they are 'very happy,'" according to the Gallup Poll released on the final day of 2007. "More than 8 in 10 Americans say they are satisfied with their personal lives at this time, including a solid majority who say they are 'very satisfied.'"
Another extensive survey conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center found that 65% of Americans termed themselves "satisfied" with their lives. That compares with the four economic powerhouses of Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which averaged about 53%.
This difference isn't something new. It's been around for a long time. It's a part of what foreign-affairs mavens call "American exceptionalism." The question is, why are Americans so darned happy?
For one thing, Americans are far richer than those in other countries. And yes, this matters. Contrary to popular belief, neither the Europeans nor the Japanese lead better lives than Americans.
A study a few years back by Sweden's Timbro think tank came to these startling conclusions: Virtually every nation in Europe lagged the U.S. in income. Indeed, if it were a state, the EU would rank 47th in per capita GDP -- on par with Mississippi and West Virginia.
Americans' homes have roughly twice the square footage per occupant as those in the EU, Americans own more appliances, and, on average, they spend about 77% more each year than Europeans.
Yet, though the U.S. economy is head-and-shoulders above the others, you'd never know it from our friends in the mainstream media. As repeated surveys show, U.S. media coverage of the economy is overwhelmingly slanted toward the negative side of things.
But a look at the facts shows something quite different.
U.S. household wealth climbed from $38.8 trillion in 2002 to $58.6 trillion in the third quarter of 2007, an unprecedented 51% surge in just five years. That includes the recent meltdown in home prices.
By any historical standard, Americans are unbelievably wealthy.
Moreover, despite the near-collapse in housing, the U.S. economy remains strong. It grew at a 3.1% rate during the first three quarters, and almost certainly kept growing in the final three months.
Economist Irwin Stelzer adds another reason why Americans are happy right now: a million new jobs over the last year, a milestone that is underpinning U.S. economic growth right now.
But can economics really matter that much? You bet. Money may not buy love, but it helps buy happiness. In fact, according to the Pew folks, there's a 72% correlation between per capita GDP growth in a country and its citizens' happiness.
What about social trends? As economist Irwin Stelzer recently noted, "teenage drug use, pregnancies, smoking and drinking are all on the decline; welfare reform is working, bringing down child poverty, and the divorce rate is falling."
Oh, and we're having more babies than at any time since the 1970s -- not something that a gloomy, depressed society does. Our 2.1 babies per adult woman puts us at the top of the developed world's fertility rankings (Europe, by comparison, has a population-shrinking 1.5 rate). A child is the biggest bet on a happy future that two people can make.
Then there's religion. A 2006 Harris Poll found on average that 43% of those in Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and France believed in a Supreme Being. In the U.S., it's 73%. That suggests a link, in developed nations anyway, between religiosity and happiness.
Face it, Americans are an unusually happy, optimistic people. In a way, it defines us. A big reason is our economy -- huge, innovative, low-tax and less regulated than others.
That's what makes us different. Vive la difference! |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 4:49 am Post subject: |
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And I will also chirp in with the proper response.....most on the back of military spending , hardware and killing.
Happy? Yes? Ignorant? more so....
Now come on, everyone can take their potshot at me for my unshaking stance for decency and the memory of all who die for the sake of this "happiness".
Further, look at a movie like "The Ground Truth" and then let's speak about happiness. Happiness is not based on ignorance. You are talking about hedonism if anything.
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 6:36 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel dubiously retorted:
| Quote: |
Happy? Yes? Ignorant? more so....
Now come on, everyone can take their potshot at me for my unshaking stance for decency and the memory of all who die for the sake of this "happiness".
Further, look at a movie like "The Ground Truth" and then let's speak about happiness. Happiness is not based on ignorance. You are talking about hedonism if anything. |
You make ignorance a four-letter word, doobie.
First, get your terms straight: hedonism and materialism are not synonymous. All societies that are developed or striving to be are materialistic to some degree. Hedonism is the pursuit of self-pleasure which may or may not be derived from materialism.
Happiness, while a relative term, has a common meaning. Those who are optimistic and who can laugh at themselves are more likely to attain it. Most Americans know how to laugh and saving face isn't a priority. But as a Canadian--er--immigrant to Canada--you wouldn't know that. We do not deem civil strife, cynicism, pessimism, and atheism to be admirable dispositions, beliefs, or attitudes.
The Pew polling is held in high esteem and found similar results over the past quarter century. Not surprisingly, most Americans are religious (the 73% figure is a very low estimate; closer to 90% but, regardless, much higher than Canada or Western Europe to be sure).
Can wealth bring happiness? Ask Michael Jackson or Brittany Spears that question. But having the means to a comfortable life, i.e. not having to engage in subsistence farming or other daily survival tactics, certainly lends itself to amiability but isn't the decisive factor.
Obama understands this better than most: hope springs eternal and where there is hope there is always a remnant of happiness. |
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Matt_22
Joined: 22 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:49 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
And I will also chirp in with the proper response.....most on the back of military spending , hardware and killing.
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is this a joke?
the american economy is not successful because of the war in iraq. it is successful despite the war in iraq. you think pumping your own country with fear, the killing of thousands of your own troops, and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars for some middle eastern version of duck-hunt is what's pumping the economy up? i'd say it's more likely that it has to do with relatively low tax rates, a materialistic yet hard-working culture, a working class recently tapped as the most efficient in the world, an infrastructure second to none, and that fact that the US blows the rest of the world away in research and higher education. now how long that lasts remains to be seen, and i'm not arguing that a lot of underhanded tactics make the world go round. but it's not like any one country owns a monopoly on "sinful governing" and shady foreign policy. take off your tinfoil hat and come down from your soapbox. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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Defining happiness is the hard part, I think.
| ddeubel wrote: |
And I will also chirp in with the proper response.....most on the back of military spending , hardware and killing.
Happy? Yes? Ignorant? more so....
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Always there to answer a question nobody asked, huh?
Iraq has nothing to do with this discussion. You know that as well as I do. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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Happiness is kind of a slippery concept. In a poll like this, the respondents have to do some mental calculations along these lines:
a. Cousin Billy just got divorced
b. Sister Sally will be going off to college next year and we're not sure how we're going to pay for it
c. Grandma Jane died last month
Am I happy? Well, heck yes.
My point is we have to subtract the normal problems of daily life from the equation to answer the question. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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I'm NOT talking about Iraq. The movie just referred to it but also the movie refers to a very salient point about America (and many other countries) -- it is organized to brainwash the youth towards moral purity (and I use "purity" in its fullest anthropological sense) myth and eventually killing.
Economically, the U.S. is pumped and primed by killing; manufacture, investment, exportation, foreign lending etc...... Even oil holds no candle to these megaliths.
Rich and happy? Happiness is a very subjective and individual quality. One can said to be happy killing or happy holding hands. What this poll measures is hedonism (sorry Steve, got the term right.).
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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a nation of singing evangelicals, narcissistic stars and the self esteem movement is full of self-defined "happy" people?
surprise, surprise
though having crisscrossed the continental U.S. five times myself I haven't come across that many happy people |
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nateium
Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Matt_22 wrote: |
| ddeubel wrote: |
And I will also chirp in with the proper response.....most on the back of military spending , hardware and killing.
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is this a joke?
the american economy is not successful because of the war in iraq. it is successful despite the war in iraq. you think pumping your own country with fear, the killing of thousands of your own troops, and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars for some middle eastern version of duck-hunt is what's pumping the economy up? i'd say it's more likely that it has to do with relatively low tax rates, a materialistic yet hard-working culture, a working class recently tapped as the most efficient in the world, an infrastructure second to none, and that fact that the US blows the rest of the world away in [b]research and higher education.[/b] now how long that lasts remains to be seen, and i'm not arguing that a lot of underhanded tactics make the world go round. but it's not like any one country owns a monopoly on "sinful governing" and shady foreign policy. take off your tinfoil hat and come down from your soapbox. |
Good summary. Anti-Americanism is at such a high that alot of people forget why America has been so suscessful; as if a nation of people had just gone out and violently stolen everything from the poor innocent peace loving people of the world!! |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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| It's nice to know u guys are so happy though. Although just from memory the happiest kids at my school were normally dumb as rocks. There might be a correlation right there. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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ddeubel replied:
| Quote: |
| What this poll measures is hedonism (sorry Steve, got the term right.). |
It's o.k. to be ignorant (we all are from time to time) but willful ignorance is inexcusable but you excel at it.
You can parse the real meaning of happiness like a drunk ancient Greek philosopher all you wish but the typical reader will get the gist of the article.
Hedonism and materialism are not synonymous despite your insistence. Look them up in a good dictionary, and get past the first definition listed for each. Then, as Pat Sajak would say, buy a vowel and get a clue.
JMO:
You mean ignorance is bliss and all that?
I suggest you read Ezra Pound's famous poem, "Salutation." You might come away with a different view of that. |
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mateomiguel
Joined: 16 May 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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| You all argue on the Internet all you want. I'll be over there, being happy and a citizen of the greatest country mankind has ever known. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| Economically, the U.S. is pumped and primed by killing; manufacture, investment, exportation, foreign lending etc...... Even oil holds no candle to these megaliths. |
While the American military industrial complex is a source of jobs for Americans, only the most ignorant of economics would say that this drives the economy, let alone your patently stupid statement that it is the economy. The guns and bombs are paid for with tax dollars. Where did those tax dollars come from? The military isn't a source of wealth, but a drain on wealth.
In econ 101, my prof had us read the essay below. You would benefit from reading it.
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
1.1
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
1.2
Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
1.3
The same thing, of course, is true of health and morals. Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits: for example, debauchery, sloth, prodigality. When a man is impressed by the effect that is seen and has not yet learned to discern the effects that are not seen, he indulges in deplorable habits, not only through natural inclination, but deliberately.
1.4
This explains man's necessarily painful evolution. Ignorance surrounds him at his cradle; therefore, he regulates his acts according to their first consequences, the only ones that, in his infancy, he can see. It is only after a long time that he learns to take account of the others.**2 Two very different masters teach him this lesson: experience and foresight. Experience teaches efficaciously but brutally. It instructs us in all the effects of an act by making us feel them, and we cannot fail to learn eventually, from having been burned ourselves, that fire burns. I should prefer, in so far as possible, to replace this rude teacher with one more gentle: foresight. For that reason I shall investigate the consequences of several economic phenomena, contrasting those that are seen with those that are not seen.
1.5
1. The Broken Window
Have you ever been witness to the fury of that solid citizen, James Goodfellow,*1 when his incorrigible son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at this spectacle, certainly you must also have observed that the onlookers, even if there are as many as thirty of them, seem with one accord to offer the unfortunate owner the selfsame consolation: "It's an ill wind that blows nobody some good. Such accidents keep industry going. Everybody has to make a living. What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window?"
1.6
Now, this formula of condolence contains a whole theory that it is a good idea for us to expose, flagrante delicto, in this very simple case, since it is exactly the same as that which, unfortunately, underlies most of our economic institutions.
1.7
Suppose that it will cost six francs to repair the damage. If you mean that the accident gives six francs' worth of encouragement to the aforesaid industry, I agree. I do not contest it in any way; your reasoning is correct. The glazier will come, do his job, receive six francs, congratulate himself, and bless in his heart the careless child. That is what is seen.
1.8
But if, by way of deduction, you conclude, as happens only too often, that it is good to break windows, that it helps to circulate money, that it results in encouraging industry in general, I am obliged to cry out: That will never do! Your theory stops at what is seen. It does not take account of what is not seen.
1.9
It is not seen that, since our citizen has spent six francs for one thing, he will not be able to spend them for another. It is not seen that if he had not had a windowpane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes or added another book to his library. In brief, he would have put his six francs to some use or other for which he will not now have them.
1.10
Let us next consider industry in general. The window having been broken, the glass industry gets six francs' worth of encouragement; that is what is seen.
1.11
If the window had not been broken, the shoe industry (or some other) would have received six francs' worth of encouragement; that is what is not seen.
1.12
And if we were to take into consideration what is not seen, because it is a negative factor, as well as what is seen, because it is a positive factor, we should understand that there is no benefit to industry in general or to national employment as a whole, whether windows are broken or not broken.
1.13
Now let us consider James Goodfellow.
1.14
On the first hypothesis, that of the broken window, he spends six francs and has, neither more nor less than before, the enjoyment of one window.
1.15
On the second, that in which the accident did not happen, he would have spent six francs for new shoes and would have had the enjoyment of a pair of shoes as well as of a window.
1.16
Now, if James Goodfellow is part of society, we must conclude that society, considering its labors and its enjoyments, has lost the value of the broken window.
1.17
From which, by generalizing, we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: "Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed," and at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the protectionists stand on end: "To break, to destroy, to dissipate is not to encourage national employment," or more briefly: "Destruction is not profitable."
1.18
What will the Moniteur industriel*2 say to this, or the disciples of the estimable M. de Saint-Chamans,*3 who has calculated with such precision what industry would gain from the burning of Paris, because of the houses that would have to be rebuilt?
1.19
I am sorry to upset his ingenious calculations, especially since their spirit has passed into our legislation. But I beg him to begin them again, entering what is not seen in the ledger beside what is seen.
1.20
The reader must apply himself to observe that there are not only two people, but three, in the little drama that I have presented. The one, James Goodfellow, represents the consumer, reduced by destruction to one enjoyment instead of two. The other, under the figure of the glazier, shows us the producer whose industry the accident encourages. The third is the shoemaker (or any other manufacturer) whose industry is correspondingly discouraged by the same cause. It is this third person who is always in the shadow, and who, personifying what is not seen, is an essential element of the problem. It is he who makes us understand how absurd it is to see a profit in destruction. It is he who will soon teach us that it is equally absurd to see a profit in trade restriction, which is, after all, nothing more nor less than partial destruction. So, if you get to the bottom of all the arguments advanced in favor of restrictionist measures, you will find only a paraphrase of that common clich�: "What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke any windows?"
Read the rest here:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html |
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nateium
Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 3:55 am Post subject: |
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| mateomiguel wrote: |
| You all argue on the Internet all you want. I'll be over there, being happy and a citizen of the greatest country mankind has ever known. |
Sweden? |
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Matt_22
Joined: 22 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 6:05 am Post subject: |
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| nateium wrote: |
| mateomiguel wrote: |
| You all argue on the Internet all you want. I'll be over there, being happy and a citizen of the greatest country mankind has ever known. |
Sweden? |
nah bro. djibouti of course. |
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