Politics 'should focus on happiness'

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Achieving national economic growth is the number one goal for politicians and one of the main indicators used to measure their overall political performance.

But, as the star-studded panel at the Wellbeing Economic Group meeting this week agreed, this single-minded obsession with GDP figures is not only foolish, it is making us all miserable. It's time we focused on something far more important: happiness.

The growth of national GDP is the single most widely recognised measure for judging the success of a country.

Politicians base their bids for government on their ability to achieve it. Journalists endlessly pay homage to it. Businesses obsess about it. And we, the public, are led to believe that it is the single most important factor affecting our wellbeing.

But, as Richard Layard explained, our preoccupation with wealth, and wealth alone, has made us lose sight of the immaterial things that really make us happy, such as friendship, love, family, work, health and community.

Despite our staggering success in achieving economic growth and rising personal affluence in the post-war era, we have failed to secure these root causes of happiness.

This seems to be what David Cameron has been partly getting at when he talked of Britain's 'broken society' and the breakdown of the social fabric that binds a society together.

For example, just 30 per cent of the population today say that they trust their fellow man or woman, half the figure of 30 years ago.

Layard says that this demands a substantial reorientation of government policy towards improving our abilities to make ourselves happy.

And he is not short on policy prescriptions either, citing reams of policy measures for governments to achieve this end.

For example, professional PHSE teaching in secondary schools delivered by specialist PHSE teachers, free classes for new parents covering the psychological and physical aspects of parenting, a substantial increase in mental health provision under the NHS and substantially building on the Future Job Fund so they no young person sits languishing on benefits for considerable periods.

Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne agreed and suggested that the case for a movement towards the politics of happiness is strengthened by the growing awareness of the social illogic that pursuing economic growth alone.

For one thing, GDP doesn't actually mean that much anymore. Since the public sector component of GDP only comprises of its inputs, a rise in public sector spending can officially increase GDP. This can occur even if it is achieved through entirely borrowed funds from abroad that do not represent an actual rise in national wealth levels.

GDP is illogical in other ways too. For instance, a jump in alcohol sales may lead to a rise in GDP due to greater profits for off-licences and increased public spending on the police and NHS. But it could also lead to an increase in unhappiness through a rise in alcoholism, alcohol-fuelled violent crime and premature deaths.

The most powerful and classic example of the negative consequences of obsessing over economic growth alone is climate change. Even today, energy companies make more money and increase GDP levels through increasing fossil fuel consumption, even though the resulting growth in carbon emissions will ultimately lead to widespread human misery on a global scale.

However, Tory MP Oliver Letwin asked why, given the apparent consensus in the room on the need to shift towards this new form of politics, it has not yet happened.

The answer, he says, is that we do not yet have a robust, credible and mainstream alternative indicator to GDP figures for measuring 'happiness'.

Indeed, when the Conservatives brought out their Quality of Life report, it was ridiculed in the press over its pledge to measure the level of public happiness.

This is not a new problem. The notion that politics should focus on creating "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" dates back to 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

But no one really knows how to measure happiness.

Without an objective and widely recognised set of benchmarks by which politician's efforts to achieve happiness can be measured, they will be endlessly vulnerable to charges of fuzzy, wishy-washy thinking whenever they try to talk about it.

While most people would agree that politics must focus on more than just reaching economic milestones, and despite the growing range of policy prescriptions to achieve this, politicians are no closer to actually making it happen.