RONALD REAGAN claimed that the scariest words in the English language are: “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.” Hyperbole, of course, but we got his point. And anyone who didn’t get it then ought to have got it by now. This Government is not merely incapable of devising policies that will help; it is incapable of even implementing them. Most of its “eye-catching initiatives” are quietly shelved after a few million in consulting fees reveal them as ill-conceived.
You might expect repeated failure by successive governments to have infused the political class with a degree of humility. They might be a little less ambitious. No more sorting out Africa and street crime by next year. No more halving teenage pregnancy by 2010. They might stick to simple matters where collective decisions are required, such as deciding which side of the road we should drive on.
Then you have underestimated the chutzpah of politicians. They are like tradesmen who make a mess of your bathroom and then bid for the job of renovating your entire house. David Cameron is a human device for detecting the direction of the political wind. And he now claims that the Government should aim to increase not GDP (gross domestic product) but GWB (general wellbeing), or happiness, as those who do not talk in TLAs (three-letter acronyms) might put it.
When parents say “I just want you to be happy”, it is normally preceded by “I don’t mind what you do”. If politicians were equally liberal, their concern for our happiness might be welcome. Alas, in these topsy-turvy times, we have laissez faire parents and paternalistic politicians. When the latter fix on some goal for us, they get busy trying to achieve it.
“I’m from the Government and I’m here to make you happy.” Now that is scary. Consider just three findings from the “new science of happiness” as Richard Layard, the economist and Labour peer, describes it. Above about £15,000, increasing your income adds little to your happiness. Believing in God makes you happy. Getting divorced makes you unhappy.
These facts explain why Westerners are no happier now than 50 years ago; our increased wealth has been accompanied by more divorce and less belief in God. They also explain why Nigeria is a happier country than Spain and why Indonesia is happier than France.
Do you really want the Government to solve this problem? Do you want it to correct your atheism for you? Or to see to it that you get and stay married? Should we really aspire to be more Nigerian or Indonesian in our ways?
Professor Layard thinks we should. He believes that children should be indoctrinated in happiness-conducive ideologies at school, such as mystical Judaism or Buddhism. And he agrees with Mr Cameron that we have got our “work-life balance” wrong. You already know the direction in which we allegedly err. Those who contrast working with living can only think we work too much. Working should be discouraged because the money it earns us does not make us happy, whereas staying at home with the spouse and children fills our hearts with joy.
I am not sure the happy brigade have interpreted the research findings correctly. A survey of 900 women in Texas ranked activities for their happiness value. Commuting and working did indeed come bottom. But housework and taking care of the children were next to bottom. And spending time with their husbands did only a little better. What these women liked most was sex. Surely these findings suggest that women should spend less time with their families and more time having affairs.
But even if “happiness science” were not sure to be wrong and misinterpreted in equal measure, happy politics would still be misguided. Because maximising happiness is not the proper goal of government policy. To see why, we need only recognise why Professor Layard and David Cameron are right that maximising income is the wrong goal.
Many of you will be reading this while on holiday. You could have spent your holidays in temporary employment. But you did not, because you value leisure as well as income. You make a trade-off between the two. This shows that income is not your ultimate value. Anything you are willing to trade for the sake of something else — be it income for leisure or food for a slim figure — cannot be your ultimate value.
But then it is clear that happiness is not everyone’s ultimate value either. I know academics who have sacrificed happiness for discovery. And I know bankers who work very hard and earn a lot of money. They know that more wealth will not increase their happiness as much as more leisure would. Nevertheless, they keep working. They prefer money to happiness.
Some will say my greedy friends are making a mistake. Professor Layard, for example, says they are in the grip of an addiction from which it is the Government’s duty to save them through punitive income taxes. It is, of course, tempting to think that those who do not share your values are crazy. But it is also an alarming pretext for state intervention. Free men should fear the happy brigade.
To have been born British is to have won first prize in the lottery of life. This is almost as true now as it was when Cecil Rhodes said it. But not because the British are or ever were the happiest people on earth. It is because, unlike those happy Nigerians, we are prosperous and free. Which means we have just about as much happiness as we want.
Jamie Whyte is the author of Bad Thoughts: a Guide to Clear Thinking
