The Economist debates happiness

The Economist, my employer, staged its first live American debate yesterday afternoon at Gotham Hall, on Broadway, in New York—two debates, in fact, back to back, one on whether Americans were failing in the pursuit of happiness; the other on whether religion had a place in public life. A good crowd. About 800, I would guess, in a 1,000-seater hall. And what a hall: oval-shaped, pillared and chandeliered, at once serious and splendid, like a cross between the Pantheon and the Vienna opera house.

Tyler Cowen stole the happiness debate, speaking against motion (which is to say, he thought Americans were making a pretty good job of pursuing happiness—motions worded in the negative are always a bit confusing). He pointed out that, by just about every metric and poll you cared to take seriously, Americans at large declared themselves to be happy, and they did more and more of the things that best correlated with happiness. America was a society, said Tyler, of "cultural individualism, extroversion and optimism", not to say religious participation, all of them general considered supportive of happiness. As for material progress, he said, "Try going to the dentist, and going to the dentist in the 1970s, and tell me which hurts more." (What is it about Tyler and dentists? His latest book, "Discover Your Inner Economist", has a whole chapter on incentivising your dentist to treat you better.)

Jeffrey Sachs, for the motion, came back with a counter-argument which I thought feeble at first, but which grew on me as he spoke. He said that though he (and the audience) might be happy now, we were making a bad job of pursuing happiness for the future: and the debate was about pursuing happiness, not being happy.

His Exhibit A was that we had let climate change advance so far. And in foreign policy, he continued, "We have not pursued the happiness of others"—a fair point, on reflection, since neither the motion nor the American constitution actually specifies one's own happiness as the object of pursuit.

Will Wilkinson, a brilliant contributor to The Economist's Free Exchange economics blog, joined Tyler in opposing the motion, and made plenty of intriguing points. Why, he asked, given that we were indeed so fundamentally happy, did we insist on talking so often as though we were miserable? The answer, he said, was that we had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, we had become too self-conscious, we were using our leisure to think:

We are a bunch of rich people who hang around worrying about our coffee addictions, or whether we are getting schizophrenia from our cats.

An afternoon well spent. I emerged persuaded that, whether they succeeded or not, Americans did at least pursue happiness with fewer complexes than most other nations on earth.

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