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Wealth Of A Nation; Happiness V GDP
Topic Started: Nov 14 2010, 09:32 PM (2,171 Views)
whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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Sarkozy has already started using happiness to measure France's wealth, which is understandable when you think of why people like France so much.

Now, Cameron is proposing the same for the UK.

As if that wasn't enough to gnaw on, I'm intrigued by how keen Cameron is to lift ideas wholesale, often irrespective of their origin. And why are we having this sort of idea promoted by fairly right wing governments rather than left wingers? Has the left lost its relevance?


David_Cameron
 
The UK government is poised to start measuring people's psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness.

Despite "nervousness" in Downing Street at the prospect of testing the national mood amid deep cuts and last week's riot in Westminster, the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing".

Countries such as France and Canada are looking at similar initiatives as governments around the world come under pressure to put less store on conventional economic measures of prosperity such as gross domestic product.

British officials say there is still hesitation in some parts of Whitehall over going ahead with the programme during such difficult economic times, but Cameron is said to want to place the eventual results at the heart of future government policy-making.

On 25 November, the government will ask the independent national statistician Jil Matheson to devise questions to add to the existing household survey by as early as next spring.

It will be up to Matheson to choose the questions but the government's aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".

The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life.

A government source said the results could be published quarterly in the same way as the British crime survey, but the exact intervals are yet to be agreed.

The source said: "The aim is to produce a fresh set of data, some of it new, some of using existing data sets currently not very well used, to be published – at a frequency to be decided – that assesses the psychological and physical wellbeing of people around the UK. So that's objective measurements of, for instance, how much recycling gets done around the UK, alongside more subjective measures of psychology and attitudes."

There are currently different views within the government on whether all indicators should be shrunk into one single wellbeing indicator or simple happiness index.

The government already polls people on their life satisfaction but experts say the innovation is that the new tests will ask more subjective questions and will be put to a larger sample size. The combined wellbeing data set, it says, will have a more central role in policy-making.

A Downing Street source said: "If you want to know, should I live in Exeter rather than London? What will it do to my quality of life? You need a large enough sample size and if you have a big sample, and have more than one a year, then people can make proper analysis on what to do with their life. And next time we have a comprehensive spending review, let's not just guess what effect various policies will have on people's wellbeing. Let's actually know."

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced last year he intended to include happiness and wellbeing in France's measurement of economic progress. Sarkozy was responding to recommendations made by two Nobel economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, who called on world leaders to move away from a purely economic concept of gross domestic product, which measures economic production, to wellbeing and sustainability. That report suggested a shift from production to greater attention to household wealth and an assessment of whether countries were growing sustainably or damaging the environment.

Canadian statisticians also poll subjective wellbeing across the country but it is not part of their official data set.

John Helliwell, a member of Canada's National Statistics Council who has been in talks with the UK on how to measure subjective wellbeing, told the Guardian: "The UK plans are putting into action the two most important elements of the Stiglitz/Sen report: systematically measuring subjective wellbeing as part of a broader national accounting system, and using these data to inform policy choices."

Over the last two months Downing Street has called on experts, including Sen, to advise it on the policy and keep one eye on Sarkozy's progress. "We've certainly drawn on Sarkozy, we have learnt from them and hope to go a bit further," a source said.

"There has been scepticism but David Cameron was very clear in opposition this would be what he would do and even in tough times it's just as relevant an agenda. The purpose of GDP is ultimately to help people lead more satisfactory lives and it is as important during a downturn as during a boom."

In 2006, just five months into his time as Conservative party leader, Cameron described the task of gauging people's wellbeing as one of the "central political issues of our time".

Helliwell said: "Canadian statisticians and researchers also poll subjective wellbeing across the country, but the data have thus far not attracted much policy attention.

"What is or could be dramatically different in the UK is for the government not just to undertake more widespread and thorough collection of subjective wellbeing data, but also to give them a central place in the choice and evaluation of public policies. That would be a global first."
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Setenza
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Knitting with only one needle
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I always get nervous about mentions of happiness factors or social stuff. Sustainiblity and environmental factors also. I don't know what they actually mean. Any time there's reports, and you look at the actual measures of 'happiness' or 'healtiness', they can seem a bit rubbish and not focussed, and can be misleading.

At least with GDP, you know what it means, and it's a lot clearer.

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whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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Setenza
Nov 14 2010, 10:47 PM
At least with GDP, you know what it means, and it's a lot clearer.

Just because it's easy to measure doesn't mean it's worth measuring. And conversely - if something is difficult to measure it doesn't mean it's not important.
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Setenza
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whatsthatonyourback
Nov 14 2010, 10:50 PM
Setenza
Nov 14 2010, 10:47 PM
At least with GDP, you know what it means, and it's a lot clearer.

Just because it's easy to measure doesn't mean it's worth measuring. And conversely - if something is difficult to measure it doesn't mean it's not important.

GDP is worth measuring though, even if easy. It's not the final answer, but it is important to know and increase.

Sure, some things are difficult. Others are impossible.

As someone who's probably more closely linked to money and happiness, it's maybe easier for me...
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Naebody
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Twat
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Sorry - did someone suggest replacing GDP with a sentiment indicator? That'd be dumb. But I don't think it's likely.

We already have plenty of privately polled confidence surveys, such as UMich Sentiment in the US, whose findings inform government policy. Given the importance there's some logic to nationalising a consumer survey (note the main UK measures are done by Nationwide and GfK, neither of which can be trusted to be here next decade), though it doesn't suddenly become a Stiglitz model of social economics just by getting rid of the word "consumer". To recap, that Guardian article's pish.
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Setenza
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It'll cost us £2m to find out.

BBC

That makes me unhappy.
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whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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Setenza
Nov 25 2010, 05:15 PM
It'll cost us £2m to find out.

BBC

That makes me unhappy.

Why does it make you unhappy? £2m is peanuts for a more comprehensive and useful measure of national wellbeing.

While I'm not particularly happy with it being labeled a "happiness" indicator, for me it's a sensible and necessary way of measuring how we're all feeling. Not how "confident" we are, which tends to be used as a indicator of where we think we are going rather than where we are.

An example of why environmental & sustainable measures are important: let's say a new source of something very valuable is found in Perthshire. Let's call it diamondberries. Suddenly, the handful of large farms who own the land are sitting on valuable real estate, and big companies move in to extract the diamondberries from the earth. It's messy and polluting work, but those involved become very very rich as a result.

However, it's well known that there is a limited supply of diamondberries, and at the rate of extraction, they will run out in 20 years. However, GDP is boosted significantly in that time - making a few billionaires in the process - but Perthshire becomes less bonny, villages are cleared, heavy traffic clogs the surrounding roads and everyone experiences pollution and noise as a result. Most of the well-paid labour used is imported, and that expertise will disappear, along with the multinational companies, once the diamondberries run out.

In the meantime, these billionaires and multinationals spend a lot of time and money undermining and neutralising local objections to the negatives of the diamondberry mines, causing disharmony and fears that the area will be permanently disfigured and abandoned with no lasting benefit once the mines close down.

Is the increased GDP the best way to measure this new diamondberry natural resource business, or should the other factors, including sustainability and social cohesion be included to measure how the nation, or indeed Perthshire, is doing?
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Naebody
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Twat
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Nowhere in that BBC story does it qualify the £2m figure in the lead. Is that annually? Or the total cost of introducing a new dataset? If it's the latter then that's exceptionally cheap. (The Office of National Statistics already costs £213m a year to run, employing 3400 people.)

whatsthatonyourback
Nov 25 2010, 05:50 PM
Is the increased GDP the best way to measure this new diamondberry natural resource business

f*ck yeah. f*cking moaning farmers. If they don't like it they can f*ck off back to Russia.

Load up on diamondberries, people. We're saved. Fill your motherf*cking boots.
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Setenza
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whatsthatonyourback
Nov 25 2010, 05:50 PM
Setenza
Nov 25 2010, 05:15 PM
It'll cost us £2m to find out.

BBC

That makes me unhappy.

Why does it make you unhappy? £2m is peanuts for a more comprehensive and useful measure of national wellbeing.

While I'm not particularly happy with it being labeled a "happiness" indicator, for me it's a sensible and necessary way of measuring how we're all feeling. Not how "confident" we are, which tends to be used as a indicator of where we think we are going rather than where we are.

An example of why environmental & sustainable measures are important: let's say a new source of something very valuable is found in Perthshire. Let's call it diamondberries. Suddenly, the handful of large farms who own the land are sitting on valuable real estate, and big companies move in to extract the diamondberries from the earth. It's messy and polluting work, but those involved become very very rich as a result.

However, it's well known that there is a limited supply of diamondberries, and at the rate of extraction, they will run out in 20 years. However, GDP is boosted significantly in that time - making a few billionaires in the process - but Perthshire becomes less bonny, villages are cleared, heavy traffic clogs the surrounding roads and everyone experiences pollution and noise as a result. Most of the well-paid labour used is imported, and that expertise will disappear, along with the multinational companies, once the diamondberries run out.

In the meantime, these billionaires and multinationals spend a lot of time and money undermining and neutralising local objections to the negatives of the diamondberry mines, causing disharmony and fears that the area will be permanently disfigured and abandoned with no lasting benefit once the mines close down.

Is the increased GDP the best way to measure this new diamondberry natural resource business, or should the other factors, including sustainability and social cohesion be included to measure how the nation, or indeed Perthshire, is doing?

Unhappy as I think it's a waste of money. I don't think it is comprehensive and useful. And as above, it's not the cost for the measure, it's the cost to find out about the measure.


I get the example, and I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would be unahppy as a result despite and financial benefit.

Then again, there are plenty of people who are unhappy when Tesco comes to their town / village.

I think it's more a political thing. Nonthing there would make me unhappy, but others would be. But financially, it's clear.
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The Eggman
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Tommy McLean
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How about the many people who are happy or unhappy regardless of their general circumstances. Joe Bloggs has a decently paid, secure job, lives in a nice area, and doesn't really have much to complain about, but is far from happy. Jane Bloggs has a hard life, gets hardly any sleep, works long hours for low wages, and lives on a rough council estate, but is content and happy with her lot.

Many people will be moaning f*ckers no matter how 'good' things get for them. Similarly, many people will be happy f*ckers no matter how 'bad' things get for them.
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YazooArab
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Paul Sturrock
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Splendid illustration there Eggman. :hat:
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Setenza
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The Eggman
Nov 26 2010, 11:15 AM
How about the many people who are happy or unhappy regardless of their general circumstances. Joe Bloggs has a decently paid, secure job, lives in a nice area, and doesn't really have much to complain about, but is far from happy. Jane Bloggs has a hard life, gets hardly any sleep, works long hours for low wages, and lives on a rough council estate, but is content and happy with her lot.

Many people will be moaning f*ckers no matter how 'good' things get for them. Similarly, many people will be happy f*ckers no matter how 'bad' things get for them.

It sounds relative. When have change - advancing or stepping up - happy, even if it's only a little bit.
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Naebody
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Twat
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Look. For f*ck sake. This is not reinventing the wheel. There are lots of "happiness" surveys, it's just they're usually called "consumer" something because they're put together by people who view us as consumers rather than citizens. For example, Nationwide. I'm baffled as to why people are upset that the data's being insourced for the same cost as electing police commissioners in the West Country.

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The Eggman
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Tommy McLean
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Naebody
Nov 26 2010, 12:40 PM
I'm baffled as to why people are upset that the data's being insourced for the same cost as electing police commissioners in the West Country.

Obviously that's silly as well.
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findus
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Jerry Kerr
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Setenza
Nov 26 2010, 08:00 PM
The Eggman
Nov 26 2010, 11:15 AM
How about the many people who are happy or unhappy regardless of their general circumstances. Joe Bloggs has a decently paid, secure job, lives in a nice area, and doesn't really have much to complain about, but is far from happy. Jane Bloggs has a hard life, gets hardly any sleep, works long hours for low wages, and lives on a rough council estate, but is content and happy with her lot.

Many people will be moaning f*ckers no matter how 'good' things get for them. Similarly, many people will be happy f*ckers no matter how 'bad' things get for them.

It sounds relative. When have change - advancing or stepping up - happy, even if it's only a little bit.

Studies* have shown that people judge themselves relative to their peers, such that someone earning a million quid a year living/working/socializing among people earning 5 million quid a year is likely to be unhappy. Certainly considerably unhappier than if they were mixing with people earning a hundred grand a year. And so on up and down the scale.

My main point of contest with any study like this is this - what are they going to do with the results? I'm unconvinced that you can artificially apply 'happiness policies' to make the country happier. It sounds gimmicky to me, something well short of the substantial social/economic changes needed.

*no links available, just read it a number of times over the years, and it makes pretty good sense to me
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