Happiness Surveys Are Stupid

In today's Times, Eduardo Porter makes the not-particularly-original argument that all our advances in technology and gains in income have been for naught. His first sentence really sets the tone for the whole article.

"The framers of the Declaration of Independence evidently believed that happiness could be achieved, putting its pursuit up there alongside the unalienable rights to life and liberty."

This is a faceplant right out of the box. Placing the pursuit of happiness on equal footing with the rights to life and liberty says absolutely nothing about whether or not happiness can be achieved. It says everyone has the right to pursue happiness. That's it.

The article goes on to ramble about how surveys have indicated that we're no happier now than we were ... sometime before now. No points of reference are given, nor are any recent surveys, scientists, or experts cited to perhaps prove his assertion that people today are no happier than their grandparents or their grandparents' grandparents were. He briefly mentions a "notorious" study from 1974 and provides a truly damning quote from Alan Krueger, who states that "we should be concerned" about happiness. Lack of troubling evidence aside, we're just supposed to trust Porter that really, seriously, we can all get as rich as we want, but we won't be any happier for it.

His logic follows the idea that we only really care about our well-being as it relates to that of our peers, and it's an argument many people have made before. The general implication is that government should step in and focus on creating equality instead of prosperity, thus creating happiness throughout the land. Of course, his entire article relies on the existence of some sort of consistent definition of happiness and a reliable happiness quantifier to go along with it, neither of which exists. He even admits that happiness surveys are ludicrously subject to in-the-moment feelings:

"Happiness seems fairly cheap to manipulate. In one experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire about personal satisfaction after Xeroxing a sheet of paper. Those who found a dime lying on the Xerox machine reported substantially higher satisfaction with their lives.

So, remind me again why we should be getting worked up about the results of these polls? Honestly, how did he manage to write this paragraph without scrapping the entire article? Unless the subject is pocket change, the numbers of a scientific study should never be "substantially" affected by whether or not the respondents recently found a dime. If they are, your study doesn't mean shit. Sorry.

But I digress, as usual.

The point is that people are definitely happier now than they were in the past. The problem for these types of surveys is that people's perspectives change. Things that seem like really big problems today, like waiting around in airports or buying a Kia instead of a Porsche, would seem laughable to people living 50, 100, or 200 years ago. Trouble is, people aren't very good at remembering what they felt like 20 years ago, let alone 50. And very few people alive today in the US (the article seems to be sort of focused on Americans) have any idea what it feels like to lose a child to disease during infancy, or to bring in bath water from an outside well, or to go through surgery without anesthesia. Those things suck, but today's norm exists without them, so people don't appreciate valuable advances in their quality of life on a day-to-day, am I happy or not kind of way. Asked to step back and appreciate the ease with which we live, I think lots of Americans would express deep gratitude for the things they supposedly take for granted. Whether or not their "happiness" is affected by this gratitude is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, he goes on:
"More broadly, if the object of public policy is to maximize society’s well-being, more attention should be placed on fostering social interactions and less on accumulating wealth. If growing incomes are not increasing happiness, perhaps we should tax incomes more to force us to devote less time and energy to the endeavor and focus instead on the more satisfying pursuit of leisure."

Aaaaand there it is, folks. What we really need to do is raise taxes, 'cause then people will have less income and they'll be less focused on making money! I mean, look at poor people now - homeless people, even. They spend almost no time whatsoever trying to accumulate wealth, and look how happy they all are! Those guys asleep at the park have tons of leisure time. They're not worried about jobs, or their kids' education, or any of those awful entrapments of normal life.

Man, that must be sweet.