Ferraris for all

Highlights of my appearance at the Battle of Ideas 2008 can now be viewed on the latest Worldbytes programme (see 30 October 2008 post). I appeared on a panel on “Growing pains: the pros and cons of economic dynamism” alongside, among others, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge University.

Labels: development, economics, growth, media appearances, speeches, Worldwrite

“Be careful what you wish for” is going to be the theme of my introduction to the session on “growing pains” at this coming weekend’s Battle of Ideas.

For a long time growth sceptics have expressed concern about the rising affluence of places such as China and India. They have argued, at least implicitly, for a cut in their economic growth. Now, with the global financial crisis, they could get what they wish for. If they do it will be a tragedy as billions of people will not be in a position to benefit from rising prosperity.

There are already signs that instability is spreading to developing economies. This was discussed in last week’s Economist (25 October) as well as by such luminaries as Paul Krugman of Princeton and Dani Rodrik of Harvard.

Over the past couple of days the authorities (the International Monetary Fund, America’s Federal Reserve and the European Union) have offered financial help to emerging economies in a bid to stabilise them. The catch is, according to a report by Capital Economics, that they are offering help to those countries that need it least. Those which most need help are unlikely to qualify.

Labels: development, economics, finance, speeches

Just a reminder I will be speaking in the session growing pains: the pros and cons of economic dynamism at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Royal College of Art, London on 1-2 November. Other speakers in that session include Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, Paul Mason of BBC Newsnight and Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge University.

Labels: development, economics, growth, speeches

I will be debating Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge University, Paul Mason of BBC Newsnight and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times in a session on the pros and cons of economic dynamism on 1 November. It is part of the Battle for Prosperity strand at this year’s Battle of Ideas festival in London.

Labels: development, economics, growth, speeches

Some last minute preparation for my Battle for China session on China as a “green peril”. An article by Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal in Foreign Affairs (July / August 2008) argues that China’s inability to provide safe food and clean air for the Beijing Olympics shows its political weakness. And a Newsweek cover story on measuring global environmental progress includes a piece arguing that China lags behind other countries with similar income levels.

Labels: china, development, environment, speeches

I will be speaking at a session on China and the environment at the Battle for China event on 12 July in London.

Labels: Asia, china, economics, environment, speeches

I am happy to say that the Brighton Salon had already written up the introduction I gave on happiness on Wednesday and the subsequent discussion.

Daniel Ben Ami’s introduction
:

Visualise two kinds of people; the Dalai lama, a smiling happy and spiritual person and a city trader, greedy, driven by money and uncaring about other people. These characters are extremes that illustrate the poles of the discussion of happiness. Money is dirty while the spiritual is positive. But popular prosperity, that most of us have some share in, is a good thing. Society as whole is benefits from being richer.


There have been different concepts of happiness in history and happiness has it historic uses. In the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America the pursuit of happiness was an individual right. Today the concept of happiness has been given a narcissistic edge in discussions about it. Wealth does not in itself bring happiness to people and happiness is seen as a different question from that of wealth. I aim to show that the obsession with happiness is a negative thing in several ways.


There really is a huge amount of literature and media coverage of the discussion of promoting happiness. There are ever expanding studies of happiness and courses on positive psychology. I wanted to attend such a course but found that they were, ironically, very expensive – several hundred pounds for a few sessions!


Study of happiness is a legitimate thing to do. Some of the work is very interesting, particularly the studies that are based on subjective surveys of people that compare modern results to similar studies done in the 1970s (or even as far back as the 1950s). There are very interesting comparisons of people who are religious and those who are not, for example. Richer people generally seem to be happier in a society than poorer people.


One of the conclusions from these studies that have been drawn by some is that people do not appear to have become any happier over time, particularly since the 1970s. This has led to the so-called Prosperity Paradox (or Easterlin’s Paradox, after its originator) which says that after a certain amount of material comfort or wealth has been achieved, you do not become happier by acquiring any more. One way of exampling this is so-called ‘hedonic adaptation’. When you buy a better car it makes you happy for a while but you become used to it – ‘adapted’ – and then it doesn’t make you happy.


Another phrase used is social emulation or comparison. The absolute amount of wealth is not a gauge of happiness but the wealth one has relative to others can be. For example, if you have £10,000 when most people have £5,000, you feel more contented than if you have £20,000 while others generally have £40,000.


These observations raise legitimate psychological concerns but some, particularly Richard Layard, the UK’s leading exponent of happiness public policies, go much farther. They say that these studies prove that wealth is not worth striving for and that being more prosperous can be a bad thing. One may be stuck on a ‘hedonic treadmill’ and becoming more unhappy.


The political conclusions drawn from the happiness studies advanced by those such as Layard are wrong for three reasons.
 First, and least important, the data from the questionnaires is very variable and some may be a bit dodgy. Some surveys had only three choices of answer while some had 10. Some surveys from the 1950s and the 1970s had different questions used than those done today and there are some problems of correlating the results in statistical terms.


Much more importantly, regardless of the amount of happiness, greater affluence, popular prosperity, has had enormous benefits for most people – longer life, lower infant mortality, bigger, healthier people and higher education are just a few examples. The current generation is better off than any previous generation in history. Economic growth, the creation of wealth, has been a key factor in us having more culture, science and arts. The narrow focus on happiness ignores all these benefits.


For example, there is widely considered to be a demographic problem in that there are not enough people working to look after the growing number of elderly. This is nonsense – the richer we all are the more able we are to afford a decent standard of living for the elderly. Any shortfall would be due to insufficient prosperity, not a problem of demographics.


Furthermore, the mainstream response to climate change is to propose limits on economic growth. In so far as there are problems with the climate they would be dealt with better by the allocation of more resources and better technology that suggests a need for greater affluence rather than limits upon it.


The political conclusion drawn from the study of happiness is that happiness can somehow be a policy goal. Many worthwhile things, such as having children, for example, do not necessarily make you happy. Being good at sports may briefly make you happy when you win, but the long hours of training – getting up to run in the early-morning drizzle – don’t make you happy. It’s still worthwhile. It takes a long time to learn a language and it is a struggle but it’s worth it in the end. There’s no happiness there either.


To draw the conclusion that happiness should be the public goal is a bit like saying that, since women have attained a more equal role in society and gone out of the home to work, and they have not become happier, we should take the ludicrous position that they may as well stop working.


Most people are quite happy. About 85% of Americans say they are happy and, if the statistics can be trusted, about 70% of the people in the world say they are happy. Should the number of happy people be increased to include those who are grieving the loss of a loved one, those who have a legitimate reason to be unhappy? It is surely rational not to be happy about four billion people in the world living on less than $2 a day.


To focus on happiness as a political goal is to be happy with what you’ve got, happy with the way things are. Political happiness can seem humanistic but leads to a sort of nasty self-obsession. Happiness should not be a political goal and we should strive to increase popular prosperity.


Chair’s questions
:

Dan Travis, The Brighton Salon’s director, asked if Daniel thought the focus on creating happiness as a public policy somehow promoted vulnerability. Life is complicated and the simplification of it to happiness may have consequences such as discouraging the development of resilience in the individual. Happiness is a serious question. In his job as a tennis coach of children he is supposed to be promoting their happiness and raising their self-esteem. The tendency in policy generally is that we should all be happy in our work and social lives, which would appear to assume we are vulnerable to unhappiness.


Daniel replied that one of the conclusions drawn from the statistics on mental health was that economic growth makes people insane. However, the statistics that show huge increases in mental illness in the last 20 years can partly be explained by an expanded definition of mental illness to include those who are a bit miserable. The government partly encourages vulnerability by questioning self-esteem but it also encourages an inward-looking attitude where other people don’t matter so much.


There is some pressure for the teaching of happiness in schools to be made part of the national curriculum. The Harvard positive psychology course was that college’s most popular course until very recently (and how much does that cost? asked a wag in the audience). Daniel said to teach happiness would degrade education. How could it be taught and how could it be taught without encouraging self-obsession through the focus on self-esteem?


Audience questions and points:


Dave quoted the philosopher who said that life without suffering would be life without meaning and he saw happiness as a neutral qualifier of progress, but surely achievement would not be a much better indicator. Rob asked how new this focus on happiness was. The oldest philosophical question is: What is the good life? There were historic answers to this question that differed and there was a distinct nineteenth century answer: the most happiness for the most number of people. Also, what is behind the drive to use happiness in this way?


Nick asked how happiness was actually measured and how its nature was actually worked out. He had been working all over Africa and on his return found that people did seem less happy than in poorer Africa. There were fewer children than in Africa and fewer happy children everywhere in Europe than in Africa. On public transport, it struck him how detached people seemed from each other as they individualistically sat in their own space, listening to their iPods. Europeans seem to care less about each other than Africans, as one can see by the long greetings that Africans have and enquiries after the health of family, friends and livestock.


Steve felt we needed solutions to the individual infantilism in the west, a way of finding fulfilment in our lives that was independent of the government. Luke pointed out that happiness was now on the under-threes’ curriculum in childcare. Government policy aimed at healthy and happy children seemed to encourage misery. Matt said that as the people achieved some prosperity they did not then associate it with the good life. People saw the good life as doing meaningful work and the government hoped to succeed in giving the illusion that people’s work is meaningful.


Confused, he said, by linguistic relativism, Tudor asked if people were indeed best-placed to judge their own happiness. Could there be an empirical judgment based on cultural expectations of what happiness is? A new face at the salon said Britney Spears has everything and doesn’t seem very happy. Individuals surely have very different choices to make about their happiness, she pointed out.
 Jo said that happiness is something we grow up hoping to achieve although not necessarily experiencing it in immediate existence. You assume your children will make you happy but you don’t perceive having children in those terms, as a kind of balance of happiness that is experienced.


A man near the back (sorry I didn’t catch the name) said that power comes with prosperity and that, once material needs are met, the pursuit of power and its acquisition could make one happier. In this way the Prime Minister should be as happy as the day is long!


Daniel Ben Ami’s responses:


On the technical measures of happiness, Daniel said that happiness was a huge and diverse market with many different kinds of data and scales, much of it difficult to assimilate. The subjective surveys taken do vary a great deal and that was partly the point. But what could be said of the evidence of these surveys is that they seem to indicate that people do not become subjectively happier after they have achieved a certain level of material wealth.


Individualism was certainly seen as a problem in Europe but it is not necessarily related to the affluence of Europeans. There is no cause and effect between the two things. For example, it is assumed by some that we have less time in Europe and we’re always working but, when our long education and retirement are considered, in the long term the statistics show we spend less time at work than people in developing countries and that our work is not of the backbreaking kind.


Happiness is a good thing for psychologists to study and I have no problem with that, Daniel said. I object to happiness as a government policy. Economic indicators are imperfect but they give a good early indication of the nature of social progress. Happiness itself should be an individual decision and the government intervention in people’s minds is an intrusive effort to control people’s moods.


The happiest people surveyed are those in the US who are religious, Republican and bigoted! This sort of research is very interesting in the light it throws on human psychology but it’s not the basis for government policy.


What is new? The declaration of American independence was only a right to pursue happiness – it didn’t make it compulsory. It was created as a basis for governing society whereas now the discussion is about a self-obsessed withdrawal. I was struck by a British student featured in a TV programme who had been sent to India to work in a clothing factory. Scornful of the conditions that she found, she said that she had come to India to find out about herself. Shouldn’t she have gone there to find out about Indians?


Audience responses
:

A young man said that surely the effect of travel was to find out about one’s self and to learn about other people and that the two are the same thing. Steve said that narcissism could be seen every day in Heat magazine and that it was a part of human psychology. Self-awareness was necessary to achieve higher levels of development and if you don’t know yourself you don’t know anything. Individualism is not all negative.


A new face, Sue, said she had grown up in an anti-Thatcher and Reagan household in the 1980s. The Gordon Gecko character from Wall Street, who said ‘greed is good’, seemed to have become a modern icon. The ‘lunch is for wimps’ outlook seems to have been adopted. Nadia asked if Daniel’s objection to striving for happiness was aesthetic or moral. Dave said that concentrating on happiness rejects much of human experience and much of the creativity of humanity. Rob said great art is not about happiness and that suffering and striving are vital things. To try to encourage happiness is to adopt and attitude of patting people on the head.


Ann questioned the assumption that we are better off in Europe. Is prosperity measured properly in terms of economics and would progress, considered as a concept rather than a fact, actually show we were better off? Another man near the back said it was surely possible to pursue one’s own happiness by the helping of others. There was no necessary contradiction between helping others and pursuing happiness individually. Matt said individualism isn’t necessary for prosperity to continue.


Daniel Ben Ami’s final remarks
:

You can measure prosperity in many ways. The gross domestic product has increased dramatically. Since the 1970s many more people have telephones and central heating, for example. If anything, measures such as GDP underestimate the benefits of economic growth, which the new proponents of happiness say make us unhappy.


Individualism is not the problem per se, but a certain kind of individualism, that sees the self as a victim, is not positive. The autonomous individual is good, and a better component part of collective groups. Self-improvement once had a key form that meant striving for prosperity. Happiness as self-improvement has no striving because to be happy one must be happy with what there is.


Thanks to Daniel Ben Ami for an excellent introduction and thoughts were provoked.

Labels: happiness, speeches

I will be speaking on happiness at the Brighton Salon on the evening of 23 April.

Labels: happiness, speeches

Spiked has published my essay on why China’s environmental problems do not make it a “green peril”. It is based my talk to the China Development Society of the London School of Economics Students Union and part of a spiked campaign against China-bashing.

Labels: china, environment, speeches, spiked

I will be giving a talk on China as the new “green peril” at the London School of Economics at 2pm on 5 March.

Labels: Asia, china, environment, speeches

Tessa Mayes has written on Culture Wars about the meeting I spoke at in November at the Institute of Contemporary Art on the global working class.

Labels: Asia, globalisation, speeches, work

I have just discovered that the monograph by Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod on Happiness, Economics and Public Policy (Published by the Institute of Economic Affairs) is available to download from the internet. The report is a useful critique of the mainstream happiness discussion from a technical economic perspective. It is also a good source on the key references on the subject. I am sharing a panel with Ormerod at the Royal Society of Arts on Thursday (see 30 November post).

Labels: economics, happiness, speeches

I will be part of a panel discussing happiness at a meeting at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London at lunchtime on 6 December. The other panellists are David Willets (a Conservative MP) and Paul Ormerod (an economist).

Labels: happiness, speeches

On Thursday I will be debating the virtues of America at a Manifesto Club event timed to coincide with Thanksgiving. My brief is to talk on the importance of mass consumption and production. I have also contributed to a Spiked article on the subject.

Labels: America, consumption, speeches, spiked

Spiked has published an article by me on the global working class. It relates to the debate I am taking part in on the subject at the Institute of Contemporary Art on 20 November.

Labels: Asia, globalisation, inequality, speeches, spiked

On 20 November I will be speaking at an event at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London on the new global working class.

Labels: globalisation, speeches, work

I will be speaking at a session on economic development at the Battle for Africa strand at the Battle of Ideas festival in London. My session will include Professor Paul Collier, Giles Bolton and Firoze Manji. Other sessions in the strand are on saving Africa and on the continent’s growing ties with China. The Battle of Ideas is on the weekend of 27-28 October.

Labels: Africa, china, development, speeches

I have come across so much on happiness in the last few days that I will have to resort to relaying it in bullet point form:

* Happiness debate in the Financial Times. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, had a belated review of Richard Layard’s 2005 book on happiness published in Wednesday (“Why progressive taxation is not the route to happiness” 6 June). A particularly interesting point he made was that the attack on happiness can be seen as a challenge to modernity itself. Developments such as improvement in life expectancy, the liberation of women from household drudgery or easier divorce do not increase reported happiness.

Two book hitters in the happiness debate replied to Wolf with letters. Layard says that there are some aspects of modernity that should be ameliorated. He gives levels of trust as an example. Meanwhile, Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at the University of Warwick and well-known happiness advocate, makes the familiar point that reported happiness has not increased over time in the rich countries over the last few decades. He goes on to state: “That graph could usefully be pinned up in every minister’s and president’s office”. Why he thinks it should be such a decisive argument is not clear.

* Debating Andrew Oswald at Debating Matters. Talking of Oswald, I will be debating him at the national final of the Debating Matters competition in London on June 29. We will both be “expert witnesses” debating whether happiness should be a goal of national policy. Later on the same motion will be debated by the high school students who are taking part in the competition. In conjunction with the discussion the Debating Matters team has produced a useful topic guide for the debate. (Last year I debated John Hilary of War on Want on globalisation at the same event).

* Quoted in Financieele Dagblad. Yesterday I was also quoted on the happiness debate in a substantial feature in the leading Dutch financial daily newspaper by Esther van Rijswijk. I am hoping to get it translated.

* Paradox of Prosperity essay republished. My spiked essay on the “paradox of prosperity” is to be republished by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India. The organisation is publishing a book in its professional reference series which is provisionally entitled: Prosperity Index: Assessing Growth Anew. It is due out in November.

* Happiness expert website. Ruud Veenhoven, one of the world’s leading experts on happiness, has a website: here. Evidently he also argues that a “paradox of prosperity” does not exist.

* Parenting-happiness link. A parenting expert made the point to me yesterday that the debates on happiness and parenting are linked. The likes of Oliver James argue there is a clear link between women not looking after children and the outbreak of “affluenza” in society.

Labels: affluenza, growth, happiness, india, media appearances, modernity, speeches, spiked

I will be speaking on a panel on Western interference in Africa at the Worldwrite centre at 7.30pm on 7 June. It is timed to coincide with the G8 summit of the world’s most powerful leaders in Germany.

Labels: Africa, speeches, Worldwrite

The debate I took part in on the “Battle for Affluence” at the Battle of Ideas conference on 28 October 2006 can now be viewed on video. It fears me along with Avner Offer of Oxford University, Mark Easton on the BBC, Nicholas Crafts of Warwick University and Jenny Davey of the Sunday Times. More details can be seen at my post of 5 November 2006.

Labels: affluenza, growth, happiness, speeches

I am currently in St Moritz, Switzerland, where I am chairing the main sessions of the Fund Strategy Investment Summit as part of my job. It does not directly relate to my "Ferraris for All" project but some of the economic sessions provide useful background.

Labels: economics, Fund Strategy, speeches

Yesterday I spoke at the worldwide premiere of Think Big, a new documentary by Worldwrite, at an event organised by the Great Debate in Newcastle (see 4 January post). The film shows how Ghanaians have the same ambitions and needs as Westerners. Like those in the developed world they want comfortable homes, access to modern technology and fulfilling worse. Only in a relatively poor country like Ghana it is harder to achieve such goals.

Like most Western audiences those in Newcastle said they were all in favour of development. Yet, also in a typical way, they then raised concerns about corruption, the environment, inequality and indigenous culture. I countered by arguing that the debate about development nowadays does not typically take the form of a clash between those who are in favour and those who are consciously against. Instead the mainstream view redefines development in a narrower way in response to the kinds of concerns outlined above. So what today passes for “development” is in fact hostile to the genuine modernisation, urbanisation and industrialisation of poorer societies.

Labels: Africa, development, film, speeches, Worldwrite

In Wednesday’s University of Westminster seminar on Amartya Sen (see 4 January dispatch) I argued that the Nobel prize-winning economist is key growth sceptic thinker. His Development as Freedom redefines development from being a process of social transformation (traditional to modern, rural to urban, agrarian to industrial etc) to a series of individual entitlements. He also uses the term “freedom” to refer to so many different things robs it of any real meaning (for example, removing sources of unfreedom such as poverty, tyranny, poor economic opportunities, systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities, intolerance and over-activity of repressive states).

Labels: development, economics, growth, speeches

I will be speaking at a seminar on Amartya Sen’s seminal Development as Freedom at 7pm on 24 January at the University of Westminster. The book is probably the most eloquent statement of the case for downplaying the importance of economic growth in the development process. Not only is Sen a top academic, with a Nobel price in economics, he has also acted as a senior adviser to the United Nations and the World Bank.

The seminar is not restricted to those at the University of Westminster. For more details click here.

I will also be speaking at an event in Newcastle on the environment and development on 17 March. The Saturday conference is jointly organised by the Great Debate and Worldwrite. Details are available here.

Labels: development, speeches, Worldwrite

If you want to watch a video of me being interviewed about corruption immediately before the New York Salon meeting on 21 June this year click here.

Labels: corruption, speeches

Last weekend I debated the Battle for Affluence at the Battle of Ideas festival. The thrust of my argument was that affluence has proved enormously beneficial for humanity and will continue to do so. In contrast others, such as Professor Avner Offer of Oxford university and Mark Easton of the BBC, argued that our preoccupation with prosperity has gone too far. In their view other factors, such as well-being, should be the main focus of government policy. Others on the panel included Professor Nicholas Crafts of Warwick university and Jenny Davey of the Times (London). Later that evening I also debated Professor Offer on BBC Radio Five Live.

At the conference I also chaired a session in which Damned by Debt Relief, a film made by Worldwrite, had its world premiere. The film showed how the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative imposes new conditions on the poor but does not offer any new money. A trailer for the film can be viewed here.

Other sessions at the weekend included a debate on the “happiness trap” and a series on the Battle over Nature.

Labels: affluenza, film, happiness, media appearances, radio, speeches, Worldwrite

Air travel is becoming a particular target for climate change campaigners. Although air transport currently only accounts for a small percentage of global emissions the proportion is expected to rise rapidly in the coming years. The question is discussed in more detail in a report (PDF) from Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute published yesterday. It also had extensive media coverage including an item with BBC Newsnight’s “ethical man”.

Although the subject demands detailed examination some reasons to question the consensus are already clear. Certainly the argument that most flyers are relatively rich - which is no doubt true - should not be used against cheap flights. The point is that more people than ever can afford to fly and that number should be increased much further. Mobility has both enormous economic benefits and is a key component of freedom.

Paul Charles, a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, also makes a good point in an article on the report on BBC online: "We've suggested starting grids at airports, so that planes don't have to run their engines for half an hour all the way to the runway while they're queuing up. That will cut millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions." So building larger and better airports could help reduce emissions.

No doubt over time aircraft engines can also be made even cleaner and more efficient. They are already much better than they used to be and this trend will continue.

Brendan O’Neill has written an article on the snobbery surrounding cheap flights on spiked and there is a debate on the subject at the Battle of Ideas.

Labels: speeches, television, transport

The slogan “Ferraris for all” comes for Worldwrite; an education charity campaigning for real development in the third world. Ceri Dingle, the director of the charity, was evidently asking some of its volunteers what they would really like to have. They said Ferarris. I am sure they did not necessarily mean it literally. No doubt Lamborghinis, McLarens or Maseratis would do for some. The point is that everyone should have access to the best that the world has to offer.

I appeared in the Bitter Aftertaste; a short documentary Worldwrite made criticising fair trade. To view the film on the internet click HERE. I have also written an article on the subject, called the coffee con , for Spiked.

On 28 October I will be chairing a discussion of Worldwrite’s new film Damned by Debt Relief at the Battle of Ideas festival. In 2005 I wrote an article on debt relief for Spiked.

Labels: development, film, media appearances, speeches, spiked, trade, Worldwrite