Ideally, governments seek to create conditions conducive to the pursuit of happiness. These would be conditions that foster the individual's sense of control and purpose, especially in the quest for social connection and status.
...happiness as felicity contains multitudes: a sweet and humble sense of well-being that comes from productive labor in harmony with one's nature and the world, mixed with gratitude for one's good fortune and satisfaction at being able to share the fruits of one's labor.
When Thomas Jefferson penned the Mighty Declaration, happiness was more than "being in the zone" or an internal state that accompanies smiling and laughing. Happiness was frickin' virtuous! Happiness was akin to felicity, a sense of wellbeing that comes from fruitful labor in harmony with the world.
The idea of relative poverty recognizes that basic needs extend beyond the merely material and include markers of status and belonging within a particular society. But "society" is an abstract concept. Society doesn't act on the individual directly but through intermediaries: family, intimates, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, teachers, co-workers, peers, public figures, the media - to name a few.
Rational Choice Theory (RCT) is not a theory about human nature. It's an idealized model that helps economists and political scientists make hypotheses and predictions..."Rational" doesn't mean uninfluenced by "desires, novelty, status" or what have you. It means choosing actions that somehow help achieve goals
Consuming experiences instead of things sounds so virtuous and life-enriching. Forget bling, raft down the Amazon! Have a culinary adventure in Thailand! Problem is, consumable experiences are often the kind that are bad for the planet, e.g. travel and dining out. What to do?
...American adults read, on average, 10-15 minutes a day - not counting perusing posts on social media, which probably falls under the category "using the computer for leisure". Of course, "on average"covers a lot of variation, from the non-readers to occasional binge readers to voracious readers.
Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.” - Google CEO Sundar Pichai
The other side of income is spending. Income by itself is a meaningless concept. What matters is what that income can buy. If income goes up 100% but prices for necessary stuff goes up 200%, well you're a whole lot poorer than you used to be.
Of course details matter. A super modest UBI might take the edge off of poverty without disincentivizing work and have little effect on tax rates or revenues. But what constitutes "super modest"?
It doesn't take much to trigger the SC blues: basically you reach a threshold of unfavorable self-comparison and bam! Perhaps the SC blues is subject to a dose effect: the misery of social comparison doesn't keep ramping up with exposure to ever more dazzling people.
To keep the Republican party in check, Trump has to keep his troops motivated. He has to tweet. He has to balance presidential displays with divisive rabble-rousing. A reasonable and humble Trump would lose his base and therefore the power to punish those who cross him.
"Technical manuals for 47 interest inventories were used, yielding 503,188 respondents. Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d _ 0.93) on the Things–People dimension."
- Su, Rounds and Armstrong (2009) Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests.
Are male engineers simply more sexist and less welcoming of female students and coworkers than, say, male doctors and lawyers? Why would that be? If we were only talking about the perniciousness of men, we would expect similar gender patterns in a broad range of traditionally male-dominated occupations. But we don't. There's something special about engineering.
That biology influences personality isn't saying personality is fixed or that biology has a bigger effect than other types of influence. Predispositions can be minimized, neutralized or reversed. Personal experience, socialization, and workplace culture are incredibly important. No one is denying that.
...the Diversity Memo's author says that, on average, women are more open, people-oriented, gregarious, anxious, and agreeable than men and men are more thing-oriented, systemizing, assertive, and status-driven. He further notes that biology accounts only partly for these gender differences, many of which are small, and there is considerable overlap between men and women.
Recently a Google engineer was fired for writing a very long memo about gender differences and its implications for company diversity policy. There was an uproar and he got fired. This post addresses a single word in that memo: neuroticism.
As part of their 2014 survey on religion and politics, Pew did collect data on the political affiliation of meditation practitioners. They found that most were conservative. Well, there goes my thesis I thought. Delving further, though, it turns out that many religious groups practice meditation, including evangelical Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons.
...mindfulness teachers and advocates, whom I assume don't want to drive away potential converts by creating a political litmus test for membership in the mindful community. Even groups that have promoted mindful political engagement shy away from explicit party affiliation
Another sense of happiness is about experiencing positive emotions. Gallup has a survey for that too – and it seems that experiencing positive emotions and being satisfied with life don't necessarily go together: country rankings are completely different.