July 4th Special: Make America Happy Again
From the Happiness PhD Project with Jackson Kerchis...
If an old friend of yours just returned from a 10 year trip into the wilderness and asked you “how are things in America?” — what would you say?
“Uhm, it’s complicated” — might be a reasonable answer.
FUBAR is a military acronym that also might do it justice (you can look that one up).
In any case, I’m wishing you a happy Fourth of July if you’re a US reader…
And in the spirit of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” I’m sharing three courses of action that research shows would increase happiness in the USA.
Trust in the US government is declining.
Transparency International is a German nonprofit that assess perceptions of corruption amongst different countries. In their 2020 report, the US saw its worst score since 2012, with a 67 out of 100.
Political theorist and Harvard researcher Stephen Walt points out examples like the 2008 financial crisis in which lack of regulatory oversight led to a massive greed-induced collapse which taxpayers footed the bill for; the failure of the Boeing 737 MAX; and the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal (in which the perpetrator spent about a year in jail). The haphazard government responses to COVID-19 on both sides continued this deterioration.
The proliferation of lobbying also plays a role in undermining political trust. OpenSecrets.org is a nonprofit tracking campaign finance and lobbying in the US. Their data shows that total spending on lobbying has grown from $1.44 billion in 1998 to $3.53 billion in 2020. Lobbying played a significant role in shaping political outcomes in international relations, post financial crisis regulation, and COVID-19 response. Some 65-75% of lobbyists are former government employees!
According to a 2014 paper by Avin and Lew, in high income countries (like the US), corruption reduces happiness.
So both common sense and happiness research suggest that we should focus on eliminating government corruption. Based on the research above, I suggest an obvious way to do this is to…
End lobbying: stop allowing private interest groups and foreign governments to spend billions of dollars influencing (ehem, bribing) politicians.
The US has one of the most unequal distributions of economic growth.
There is a wealth of literature confirming this observation and analyzing it. To keep things short, from 1979 to 2007 after tax income of the top 1% grew about 275%. The bottom 20% of Americans saw about 20% growth. That data comes from the Congressional Budget Office. Another example of this pattern comes from the Economic Policy Institute: in the 1980s CEO pay averaged about 30x that of the typical worker. Now the multiplier is more like 350x
Oishi, Kesebir and Diener in a 2011 paper on income inequality and happiness found Americans were happier in years with lower income inequality and less happy in years when with more income inequality. This is due to perceptions of fairness and social trust. This is in line with other research that find imbalances in wealth distribution predict unhappiness.
This suggests that if we were to reduce income inequality by some measure, it would improve overall happiness. At the same time, it seems unfair to penalize the many wealthy people who have earned higher incomes through hard work and high performance. One way to address this puzzle would be to tax the wealth being handed down from exceedingly rich parents (say, top 1%) to their children.
Have you ever met a teenager with a multi-million dollar trust fund waiting for them? I’ve met a few. And to put it plainly, it doesn’t do any favors for character building.
This solution would take a share of those funds and put them back into the game for aspiring entrepreneurs and lower earners. Many great minds like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have already pledged to do something like this on their own accord: giving their money away to good causes instead of handing down billions to their estate.
Increase taxes on inheritances with the exception of donations to philanthropy.
America has amongst the worst work-life balance of any first-world country according to the OECD’s Better Life Index.
A Gallup poll found that the average American work day has increased by some 90 minutes in the last 20 years. And in terms of work-life balance policy, the US is virtually the only first world country that does not legally mandate any paid holidays or vacation time. Canada is the next closest, guaranteeing a total of only 19 days.
And yet research consistently shows that time affluence is a path to happiness. A 2008 paper by Kasser and Sheldon showed it’s true in a variety of settings and other research suggests spending money to “buy back time” also promotes happiness.
So it stands to reason that workers should have the right to a bit of time off. And that’s a fitting note to end on on this July 4th — that you and your buddies should all have the day off.
Mandate paid holidays and minimum time-off protections for workers.
If we want to make America happy again (pun intended) we should support work-life balance, address generational income inequality, and fight corruption.
Happy Fourth!
Your happiness nerd,
Jackson