Happiness and Economic Performance

Abstract

Those who say that money can't buy happiness don't know where to shop. Anon. Do you think your children's lives will be better than your own? Probably not; nobody does these days… In all countries there is doom and gloom, a universal sense of decay. Norman Stone, historian. What we call happiness in the strictest sense of the word comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree. Sigmund Freud, psychologist. Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets at night. Joyce Grenfell, actress. Economic performance is not intrinsically interesting. No‐one is concerned in a genuine sense about the level of gross national product last year or about next year's exchange rate. People have no innate interest in the money supply, inflation, growth, inequality, unemployment, and the rest. The stolid greyness of the business pages of our newspapers seems to mirror the fact that economic numbers matter only indirectly.