AP PHOTO/RICHARD DREW
HOW HAPPY
ARE YOU?
a possible federal wellbeing index. The guiding principle is itself
homegrown: GNH science largely
rests on the influential Easterlin Paradox, named for American
economist Richard Easterlin, who
showed that rising incomes increase happiness only to a point.
Easterlin’s fellow Americans
seem, if not eager to confront his
paradox, at least disinterested
enough not to put up a fight. A
year before Cameron installed the
British index, the P.M. was battling critics who called the very
concept “wooly” and “impractical.” Meanwhile, President Obama
created a panel last March to rou-
HUFFINGTON
04.28.13
Some top economists making
sense of the recession are
happy to knock down the
old gods — profit, loss, GDP,
GNP — for new ones.
tinely track “subjective wellbeing,” and no one seemed to notice.
Whether or not the metrics
take, their arrival on American soil
completes a cycle that began with
the financial crisis. When Time
asked the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz why he came
out in support of wellbeing indices
in 2009, effectively legitimizing
them in the West, he blamed five
familiar letters: “U.S. GDP looked
good, and then we realized
it was all a phantasm.”
Joseph
Stiglitz, a
winner of
the Nobel
Prize in
Economics,
spoke in
favor of
wellbeing
indices in
2009.