Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
by: Richard Layard
Topics include:
There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. We all want more money, but as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not speculation: It's the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled.
The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we'd have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about-the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it.
Until recently there was too little evidence to give a good answer to this essential question, but, Layard shows us, thanks to the integrated insights of psychology, sociology, applied economics, and other fields, we can now reach some firm conclusions, conclusions that will surprise you. Happiness is an illuminating road map, grounded in hard research, to a better, happier life for us all.
From one of the leading voices in the new field of happiness studies comes a groundbreaking statement of the case: what happiness is, exactly, and how to get more of it, as individuals and as a society
About the Author
Richard Layard is one of Britain's best-known economists and a leading world expert on unemployment and inequality. He runs Europe's leading economics research center within the London School of Economics. He worked for the British government as an economic adviser from 1997 to 2001, and in 2000 he became a member of the House of Lords. He is the author of a number of academic books.
Lessons from History
This book is fatally flawed. Layard's notion that you can create happiness by removing risk from society is absurd. Risk and challenge are what keep us alive. Without it, we become nothing more than drones. Instead of spending the time on this book, readers would do well to read Ayn Rand's account in her first novel, "We the Living," of what happens when people try to do just what Layard proposes in his book. "We the Living" is Rand's profound personal account of the swift and complete demise of her country and its people through the acceptance of the collectivist philosophies that Layard pushes in his book. Living in Soviet Russia just after the 1917 Revolution, Rand lived with all the socialism that "Happiness: Lessons from a new Science" claims is the only way, and grew to hate it all with such distate that she spent the rest of her life trying to abolish it. Her book alone is reason enough not to read this one.
The book contains lot of valuable information on happiness, just not 235 (plus 75 pages of footnotes) of it. The information and research in this book could easily be condensed under 50 pages. In summary, our relationships (family, spouse, children, friends), finances, work, health, personal freedom, and personal values determine our happiness. What does not determine our happiness is age, gender, IQ, and education.
The author does a good job explaining the myth that more money equals more happiness. Money matters, but only to the extend it can pay the bills.
The annoying part was the author's rather liberal views. The author firmly supports graduated income taxation because accumulation of more wealth by the wealthy does not increase their overall happiness. This in spite of the fact that author readily acknowledges graduated taxation has no effect on the distriubtion of income. The author also adds his views on the rat race and the education: "We are past the period of evolution when only the fittest can survive. So we should teach our young to give less value to status and more value to helping other people". Ok, so we should all turn into Commies and stop the competitive nature of our economy so we can all be like Cuba and North Korea, whose income per capita is the envy of the world and has many happy starving people.
Reviews:
From Bookmarks Magazine
Reviewers agree that Layard, a leading British economist and well-known government advisor, raises fundamentally important questions that we all tend to ignore in our strivings to achieve on a daily basis. The author supplies ample data to show that capitalisms emphasis on individualism and competition has helped to diminish the feeling of a common good among people of different classes and societies. The critics disagree, however, on Layards recommendation of state- and church-oriented intervention to reverse the patterns of behavior that are not, in so many eyes, contributing to happiness. Since "happiness studies" is a new science (see Gregg Easterbrooks The Progress Paradox *** Mar/Apr 2004), it stands to reason that the early tomes of this philosophy would stir controversy. Just dont let it dampen your day.
Many not happy on "hedonic treadmill"
While many U.S. adults wish for better finances in the new year, a British economist says money is not the path to happiness.
Humans cling to the idea that money and happiness are linked, so 'people tend to expect more from money than it can give,' Richard Layard, author of 'Happiness: Lessons From a New Science' told the New York Times.
'Many studies show that people have an exaggerated forecast of the benefits of having that higher income or bigger house,' he said.
Researchers have found people experience more happiness for a while after buying something or getting a raise, but then the thrill goes away and happiness levels return to the base level.
Studies have also shown that whatever people earn, they tend to think right amount they need to live on is higher still.
People tend to crave more money and things to restore that peak thrill, said Layard, only to adapt and seek the next high -- an addictive phenomenon that economists call the hedonic treadmill.
Great beginning, disappointing conclusion
Richard Layard's book has two parts: (1) The Problem (Why People aren't happier even though income is way up), plus lots of good studies on the subject, and (2) What can be done (To make us happier than we are).
The first part is loaded with great information coming from research studies--what time of day most of us are the happiest, which countries are happiest, the role genes play in happiness, what activities make us happy, how stable happiness has been in the U.S. over time, how jealousy of the income of our peers has on our happiness, and why Jeremy Bentham's concept of maximizing the most happiness for the most people should be the basis for personal and governmental decisions. So far, so good. I totally agree, and found the reading very worth while and educational.
Part two--how to solve the problem of stable instead of rising happiness--is where the book gets into big trouble. Not only does Layard not come up with any down to earth specific suggestions, but he often uses gobbledigook to explain murky solutions. Example: "A society cannot flourish without some sense of shared purpose. The current pursuit of self-realisation will not work...." What exactly this means in concrete ideas, he doesn't make clear--at least, to me. He has oversimplified obvious ideas with no great plans on how to implement them. Example: Unemployment causes unhappiness--so, we need to reduce unemploymnent. Duh!
In other words, Layard appears to be an economist who wants the government to reduce our stress. Since when has the government reduced our stress? That's what I want to know.
If you look at most advanced countries trailing the U.S. in happiness, they include France and Germany, two countries which give their people cradle to grave medical care and enough vacation time to put any U.S. citizen into extasy. Yet France and Germany trail the U.S.A. by several percentage points in happiness.
Layard leaves out possibly the most important factor in determining the happiness of the people in a given country--economic freedom. [...] Those with the least economic freedom trail behind.
If the reader wants tips on how to improve his or her personal happiness, I suggest reading Authentic Happiness by Seligman. Having said all this, there is so much great information on the subject of happiness in this book I found it well worth reading and I'm glad I bought it. Just don't expect any great ideas on how to solve the problem.
I still do agree with Layard that legislation and government policy should be concerned with the happiness of the people effected by it. And, each government should do its best to measure the happiness of its citizens. Whether a given policy will increase or decrease happiness--now that's not so easy to predict.
One gets the feeling that Layard is using his research on happiness to bolster his views on economics. Whether they do is highly debatable.
This is the book I've been looking for. A noted economist and member of the British House of Lords starts his book with the central premise--how do we create public policies which will increase human happiness and well-being?-and explores the subject from a variety of disciplines. Layard's findings make clear how the Anglo-American policies of the last 30 years have worked to undermine well-being while European social democratic policies are working far better. Most powerful is Layard's assessment of how low taxes actually lead to time poverty and overwork, with tremendous negative impacts for families, friendships, community, health, and other key factors that are the most important underpinnings of happiness. This book makes it clear why consumer society undermines our well-being and must be tamed. We need to begin trading productivity increases for time instead of money and stuff if we are to build a happier, fairer world. All that's missing is the ecological sustainability argument, but it would only further bolster Layard's point of view since our consumer society is clearly ecologically destructive as well. This book should be must-reading for policy makers. It clearly demolishes the arguments of right-wingers who want more tax cutting, etc. After reading it, one should recognize immediately the non-sense at the foundation of the rightwing (especially of the Ayn Rand libertartian variety)agenda. This is the book progressives need to make the case for social democracy and economic justice.
This book looks at the major causes of happiness and why they don't seem to be working. He asks, "If money can't buy happiness, what can?" More people have money to use for trips, vacations, pleasure, cruises, clothes, cars, houses, etc. -- more than they know what to do with it.
Americans have a higher standard of living at present, but do our many possessions and luxuries make us happier? Doesn't seem to, as we're all stressed almost to the limit.
Societal pressures to make and spend money on more and expensive possessions takes an enormous toll on overall happiness. Do we even know what it is to be happy anymore, to be loved, to be in love, to have good children who care; exactly what is happiness?
He attributes the lack of average satisfaction on the vast difference between the "haves" and the "have-nots", but it seems he is mainly concerned with Britain there. In this small backward town, there is the same thing. Some who have it all, and the rest are ignored as if they don't exist.
Love, family togetherness, contentment, community ties, religion, employment -- all are lacking and almost nonexistent. A person's health will influence the amount or lack of his happiness. Americans are the most medicated people on earth. Have you heard someone brag about how many pills a day he or she must take just to keep going? I know someone who spends as much every month on so many medications as the meager income I must use to survive, plus enormous amounts of money on insurance so he can live longer than his ancestors. Don't they realize they've turned into drug addicts almost on a par with meth users?
There will be discontentment as long as the rich flaunt their finery in front of poorer citizens, aliens, and the homeless -- and look down their long noses at them. They care only for themselves, and that is not conducive to happiness. The wealthy aren not happier, just more comfortable than the rest of us -- for the time being. Any kind of catastrophe could render them penniless and homeless, and then they will experience misery.