In your editorial “The pursuit of happiness” (March 23) you say that “happiness should be best thought of as the byproduct of good governance, rather than its raison d’être”.
So you disagree with the central belief of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the founders of economics, not to mention the Fabians and William Beveridge. They all believed, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that “the care of human life and happiness . . . is the sole legitimate objective of government”. In fact, why else do we have governments except to ensure a better quality of life — and a fairer distribution. There are of course many goods, including wealth, health, freedom and so on. But for each of these we can explain why they are good— they make us feel better.
But if we ask why does it matter how we feel, there is no answer. It is self-evident. It’s the overarching good.
Fortunately, politicians have every reason to take it seriously. For the best predictor of whether a government gets re-elected is not economic growth, but the life satisfaction of the people.
That is what the evidence shows for national elections in Europe since 1970 and for US presidential elections. So it’s not “the economy stupid”, it’s wellbeing.
Thus it’s encouraging that the UK opposition leader, Labour’s Keir Starmer, has promised that “with every pound spent on your behalf we would expect the Treasury to weigh not just its effect on national income but also its effect on wellbeing”.
We now have the science to do that. It’s an idea whose time has come.
Richard Layard
Co-Director, Well-Being Programme, Centre for Economic, Performance,
London School of Economics,
London WC2, UK
