Happynomics - things that matter, Pt. II

Happiness Economics:  in Pt. I, we said it's economics and psychology, and we looked at wealth.  Here's the psych part.   

So in this graphic, dark red is the world's worst; lighter red and yellow are better.  It's the prevalence of neurological disabilities across national populations.  That's the psychological reality today, or at least a part of it.

It perhaps suggests that the sane folks in the world aren't the rich ones; that there's maybe a correlation between wealth and mental illnesses.  Why might that be?

It's possible that a dog can contribute more to your

 satisfaction with life than any excess of wealth

or luxury.  It's also quite possible that children

 are mentally healthier than adults in the
developed world.  Perhaps because
they spend more time with dogs.

It's just entertaining speculation, but what if a simpler existence were the mentally healthier one.

For most of developing world, there are no checking accounts to balance, no student loans to pay, no choices among schools for your kids, no car insurance or cars for that matter; not one in twenty owns a car.  No retirement plans, no health insurance, no reverse mortgages, no home equity loans, no tax shelters, no charitable deductions, no heating or air conditioning system to get serviced, and no grocery stores to search for your kids favorite cereal.  Prayers are simple and real, "Give us this day, bread, and deliver us from the evil we see."

This index is rather controversial and perhaps exaggerates some factors of disputed significance.

Included in criticisms are questions of relevance for things like ecological impact.  This index
appears to favor tropical regions with beach and palm trees, with which I agree, of course.

Do rich people spend too much of their time thinking about valueless things? Does it matter what we wear tomorrow or what we might have in the pantry or whether our car and house and dinner table appropriately represent the stature of the person we intend to become?

So then, are there any adjustments needed for those who live in the dark red zones?  You can't help but wonder.

This one will probably get me in trouble with my wife.  :)  That happens. 

everything except that which makes life worthwhile

Fun additions to the American life and household ...        

Happiness Economics:  It is actually a popular subject, and the questions raised are intriguing. We have categories of things that seem to make folks happy, but with limits.

Merging the perspectives of economics and psychology, we can sort through the pieces of life that perhaps make us happy or sad.  What we find is that almost all of us share a similar context for basic happiness.  Mapping that to wealth is enlightening.

1. The first discovery from the inquiry -- money can buy happiness, sort of, but perhaps only at an introductory level.
   
   Food, shelter, clothing, freedom to move about, to socialize and interact -- those are the things that wealth might provide that are linked to our happiness.
2. The second discovery turns out to be about the limits of wealth.  The more you have above that first threshold, the less happy you are.
   
   Wealth intrudes in relationships, on life choices, and on our ability to appreciate normalcy.  It assaults individual values and character; e.g., why work to understand them when you don't need them in your life?  Why notice the peons when you're a player?  Why shouldn't you have everything the way you want it?   Extra wealth is an impediment to happiness.
3. The third discovery is the one and only exception to the second.  Wealth above the first threshold is an impediment to your happiness unless you give it away.  Apparently, being generous and helping others strips away the burden of great wealth that would otherwise snuff out your enjoyment of life.  Doing something for the benefit of someone besides yourself actually satisfies the heart. There are no known exceptions to these three facts, at least not among the eleven people I talked to about it.

Differences among individuals, cultures, and economies give us a wide variance in terms of how much wealth comprises that first threshold.  

Wealth is perhaps a part, but
it's absolutely NOT all that
happiness requires.  We

can do so much better

than just having more

stuff.  True? Of
course, true.

• An acceptable home in one culture might be too much in another.  That happens a lot.
• Quality of clothing or some other factor might vary similarly.  A nice handbag in one culture might be a nonsensical luxury in another.  Luxury is nonsensical most of the time.

An odd note about our neighborhood: we will spend time with our neighbors in inverse proportion to our income.  I.e., the richer we are, the less connected we'll be to folks who live nearby. Our kids are similarly affected/afflicted by our wealth.

What might the other results of such an inquiry show us -- anything good?  Or bad?

If we're going to do well by our children, where are the important parts we should be careful to include in their lives?  And can we make a difference in the lives of others too?

NOTE: A question raised in international discussion:: is the pursuit of wealth and profit likely to give citizens the quality of life they really want?  Are there higher and perhaps more noble goals a country might have besides just wealth and conquest?  There are.  Are governments likely to get on board?  Some will, but likely not all.  You can imagine why.

For a provocative presentation from a personal perspective, see The Economics of Happiness by John Robbins, the heir apparent to the Baskin-Robbins fortune.  He left it all behind for something better.  :)
An excerpt...

Pointing us in the wrong direction   For the past 75 years, the GDP has been the fundamental measure of a nation’s economic progress. The reason the United States is considered the world’s most prosperous nation is because it has the largest GDP. Economists, politicians, and other leaders take for granted that the higher a nation’s GDP, the better off are its people. 

Unfortunately, using the GDP (and its nearly identical twin, the GNP) to measure well-being and genuine progress makes about as much sense as using a fork to eat soup: It’s the wrong tool for the job.

Two months before he was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy explained why:   "Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm, nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

Long ago and far away

These kids and their families welcomed us every time we were in their country.  From almost a decade ago, this picture is of the beach landing just across the street from where they live.  It's used mostly by dads who fish the local waters. The two little girls are part of a delightful bunch of teens, all grown up now and coping with life in a country that offers little besides a nice climate.  

As for the kids there, the only thing they aren't is rich. They're smart, hardworking, well mannered, aggressively learning and pursuing skills. They and their families are practical, gracious, and hospitable.  But they're not rich.  It's not for lack of effort or work ethic, but because like most such countries, poverty was done to them.  They didn't choose to be on the list of the world's fifty poorest countries.

Poverty arrived during the colonial years as land was claimed by wealthy foreigners.  Exploitation and slavery dictated the culture that shaped the country.  Today, wealth still flows to foreign accounts as resources are extracted, the classic postcolonial flail so many countries experience (ownership/theft of resources, indigenous disenfranchisement, etc.).   

The dugouts are quite old but still in use
for fishing; ocean fishing.

So these precious children, what prospects might they have?

Their country has one library, one high school, one almost grocery store .... and no online shopping yet; they're too far off the beaten path for Amazon shipping to reach.  That doesn't matter much since the median household income is perhaps $120 a month. Internet access is still rare, of course.  Not every house has electricity, not every family has floors to walk on, and not every child can afford the small school fees.

The country is changing; government and the economy are developing slowly, and they're being helped a little by the international community.  Roads are being repaired after decades of neglect.  They have a new power plant, several agricultural projects, and a new middle school.  We've helped them build their Coast Guard and begin to manage their territorial waters.  Change takes time, and changing a country takes generations.

A group of teens took me in hand to educate me a bit. Here, we met yet again for an 

afternoon's wandering. They entertained themselves for most of the time by taking 

pictures with my cameras; 200+ on this outing. My new friend and I in the 

background; Mana (right) undergoes yet another costume change for the 

photos. They're all grown up now, married and with kids of their own 

and scrambling to survive.

Meanwhile, their children are just like ours, their moms and dads are just like us, and they could use some help today, particularly at the fringes.  In order to make the difference needed at the individual level, help needs to be personal, loving, and a mutual effort, not a program. 

Working with local development organizations (reputable, accountable NGOs) is perhaps best for the small scale addressing of needs.  Local team members can work with individual families, tutors for kids, perhaps a little health and wellness training for the family, and assistance with projects, one at a time.  Home repairs (roof, walls, floors, bedding), garden planting and crop management, safe water, home electricity ... it can take a decade or more to bring a family up to self-sufficiency, but the progress is theirs; they do the work to make it happen.


An interesting question follows; whose responsibility is it to redress this abuse of humanity in general and these individuals in particular? It's ours, I guess. Isn't it?


Feelings and excuses aside, just a mechanical look at how it works tells us we're part of the problem/solution.  Biblically, ethically, morally, rationally, and logically -- the issues of imposed poverty and economic inequality are risen from the same roots as the historical slavery market.  

Meanwhile, around the world:  "Ending extreme poverty requires world leaders to tackle the growing gap between the richest and the rest which has trapped hundreds of millions of people in a life of poverty, hunger and sickness." 

"It is no longer good enough for the richest to pretend that their wealth benefits the rest of us when the facts show that the recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the poorest."  ~The Sunday Herald, JAN 2016

Tax dodging by our multinational corporations, for example, costs developing countries an estimated minimum of 100 billion dollars (£69bn) each year. Corporate investment in tax havens has almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.  It's enough to feed every hungry child in the world and put them through school.  Both government and industry serve the wealthy at the expense of all others. ~Oxfam

So you're walking by a river and you see your kid struggling desperately to stay afloat and get to shore, what do you do?  It's your kid; you help.  Is it less urgent if your kid is really, really far away?

Conservative vs. Christian - Pt. III

When Squanto and Monte were discussing return on investment (ROI) in the corn industry, they came up with this 'fish & seed in the same hole' idea. It more than doubled the corn crop. Squanto and Monte patented the idea, formed a corporation for selling seeds and fish mush, and pretty much took all the profits from increased productivity for themselves.  Everybody worked harder, and the fish smelled really bad, but MonteSquanto, Inc., got all the corn money (profits).  Okay, no, not really, but if they had, they'd fit in perfectly with today's corporate business model.

That's the way it works these days.  Increased productivity feeds the corporation, not the worker whose productivity it is in the first place.  Some corporations are better than others in how employees are treated, but the rule of profit first is universal.

Worker productivity has more than doubled since the 1970's, but workforce wages are about the same today or perhaps a little less.  All the increased productivity has benefited only management and the owners, the top 10% of wealth holders; i.e.,  all the gains went to the rich.  Anything wrong with that?

Are employees just a resource to be used up and discarded?  (Most major corporations are openly hostile to employees and consider the labor costs a liability to be aggressively minimized.)

Should employees be paid so little that other people have to feed them so they don't starve?  (Walmart costs us about $6B/yr in financial assistance for low wage employees.  We pay and Walmart owners pocket the benefit we provide.)

Is there a difference between a slave owner's ethical stance and our current profitability motive? Broken down to cost/benefit analysis and return on investment calculations, they're pretty much identical.  Neither employees nor slaves are a corporate resource; they're people, and we're absolutely responsible for how they're treated.

Now let's consider this objectively, based on what we actually do as opposed to what we say  ...

We're the wealthiest nation in the world, but ...

Which countries have the lowest poverty rate?

• Taiwan has the lowest poverty rate worldwide – less than 2 percent of Taiwan's population lives in poverty...

followed by...

• Malaysia at 3.8 percent,
• Ireland at 5.5 percent, 
• Austria at 6.2 percent, then 
• Thailand and France at 7.8 percent, Switzerland at 7.9 percent, 
• Canada at 9.4 percent, 
• the Netherlands at 10.5 percent, and ... 
• ... France, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Greenland, Poland, Russia, ... and even China.
• the US ranks about 35th down the list.

And which industrialized countries have the highest child poverty rate?

A report released in 2012 by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reveals alarming child poverty rates within affluent, or 'developed', nations.

• The US ranks second highest among all measured countries, with 23.1 per cent of children living in poverty, just under Romania's 25.6 per cent.

If we're the wealthiest nation in the world, why do we treat our children so poorly?
Where in all of this might we find Christian principles displayed?

The conflict, of course, is between our evolved culture (frog in a kettle) and our claimed values.  The issues we can address are (1) our personal life and choices, and (2) our sphere of influence.  We can teach our children that people are not resources to be used and discarded.

Interestingly, the issue of human rights is commonly thought to be some weirdo liberal agenda.  Justice, equality, opportunity, etc.  What are the answers a sincere Christian might require?

Conservative vs. Christian - Pt. II

A conservative approach to long-term investment is perhaps the recommended life-plan, at least according to financial advisors in the mainstream of developed nations.  An appropriate mix of stocks (value & growth) and bonds ...

Oh, oh, I know, I know!  I could lay up for myself treasures on earth where Merrill and Lynch doth corrupt and where recessions break through and steal.  

I could build bigger 401Ks and fill them up, and then I could say to myself that I've got much goods laid up for many years, and I should eat, drink, and be merry.  

Right?

Summer camp for teens on the far side of the world

So is the conservative approach to possessions and wealth suited to the Christian life?  Is there a conflict between the two?  Of course.  The two are diametrically opposed, and one emphatically precludes the other.  Take a deep breath, and deal with it.

Now, how can we resolve the conflict?

For starters, are there treasures in heaven, really? Or is that just a nice phrase to use before the offering at church.

Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

Laundry in the real world ...

So on the far side of the world, my friends took me to visit their summer camp for Catholic teens; they focus on right thinking and acting for the years ahead.  In one of the poorest countries in the world, they're smart enough to know what's important in life.  They're not preachy, and they live it pretty well.  They never asked me for anything, not even once.

Their life's labor is making a way forward out of sub-survival poverty.  Getting enough food is difficult; about a quarter of their kids are underweight for height and under height for age.  Infant mortality is high.  Education is a challenge as well, but they know it's a key component of progress for their kids.  Is helping those who need a hand part of the right path?

So can I provide for my family without being stupid in a thousand ways?  And can I do my part to help others as well?  Can I maybe do enough to make a difference in a lot of lives?  Can we all?  As in 'change the world' ....


Living in the developed world puts us in the top 10% or so of humanity for wealth and income.  If we reach the U.S. median income level, it's the top 1%.  That means we're extraordinarily insulated from the real world, sheltered in wealth and luxury, and perhaps irrational when we complain that the grocery store doesn't have the bread we like.

The most difficult challenge is living with continuous awareness of Christian principle instead of our luxurious cultural norm.  At least, that's the struggle that bothers me the most.

Got any ideas on how we might actually live according to principle and resolve these questions?

Conservative vs. Christian

A moderately humorous look at how a Christian

might see the conservative player in

 today's discussion.

Conservative - those who hold a traditionalist viewpoint and associated values.  

The conservative is cautious about change, perhaps especially in regards to politics and religion. The conservative resists government involvement in life and business, property and wealth. Critical values are liberty, property, and autonomy.

Christian - those who follow Jesus, the son of God who is Father of us all.  

The Christian is focused on right relationship, with God (first) and with others.  Critical values are justice, mercy, truth, and service.

Conservatives vs. Christians: grouped by life behaviors according to critical values (US demographic, only) ...

The Conservative life effort (not talk, just actions) focuses largely on having.  

Carson offers insight into why government often has difficulty
addressing real-life issues with simplistic solutions.
It's not about money.  Money by itself is
 much too small.

• Preparation for employment through education
• Career defined by income and advancement
• Accumulation of:
• (1st) survival requirements, 
• (2nd) comfort, lifestyle, and status requirements
• (3rd) additional wealth (unearned, partially or fully) through investment (wager)
• stocks for growth and dividend income
• bonds for interest income
• gold and silver for an income cushion against inflation
• real estate for resale or rental income
• tax avoidance

The Christian life effort (not talk, just actions) focuses largely on relationship and serving.

• Preparation for life through education
• Career defined by hard work and opportunity for service
• Living with generosity, and having only for the purpose of helping and providing
• Intelligent involvement - helping without hurting is a skill not a virtue
• Committed participation by giving - not just a sop for today's tender conscience
• Investment where it makes a difference - 
• I can send a kid to college, or I can have a bigger TV; they cost about the same ...  
• I can buy a bigger house, or I can sponsor some families and all their children and school and community improvement projects and maybe another ten families
• Investment in what's needed - If I'm pro-life, that means I am also: 
• pro-education and development, 
• pro-health care, pro-nutrition, 
• pro-shelter, safety, and security, 
• pro-opportunity and mobility

Christian values (as compared to conservative values) make no place for being obscenely wealthy and continuing to be so at the expense of others.  The median western household is in the world's top 1% for wealth.  If you're above average, you'll make more in a year than most folks will in a lifetime.  Don't gloss over that.

Conservatives and big business:  twenty years of removing market safeguards (at the purchased insistence of the finance industry) gave us the collapse in 2007-8.  Derivatives and predatory lending made mega-billions for the wealthy.  Regulators turning a blind eye made billions for the perpetrators.  The government bailout provided billions in profits and bonuses for the monied participants.  Around the country, regular folks lost homes, savings, and security.  Around the world, regular folks suffered and the poor starved.  More than a million died in the first year due in part to the Great Recession.  

So what did Jesus say about such wealth and behavior?
Can someone like that enter the kingdom?  
Have we finished making excuses for ourselves yet?

Giving money at church isn't the solution, but it perhaps could be a good starting place, a first step.  Once we learn to give joyfully, we've begun to understand.  Giving of ourselves, our lives, and all we have is the honest second step in a rather long treck.  That's the calling of a Christian and completely missing from the conservative agenda.



Just my opinion, of course.  Feel free to disagree.
I suspect we're all less than perfect, me included.
This article was written to provoke my own thought and perhaps
a review of how I spend my own life.  I'm open to ideas.

You might appreciate - The Helper for some perspective.  Or Change Makers.  :)