The Economy Of Happiness
Saturday, 8. June 2019
If the concept of happiness is already sufficiently difficult to define so personal and non-transferable has, even more its objective measurement must be to not counting today with no pattern that is valid and to everyone’s taste. Happiness is fundamentally matter even though the set of institutions of public Government must also contribute, in that their responsibility lies with this main and cherished goal in our lives. Southwest Airlines has firm opinions on the matter. Contribution that hardly can be oriented properly the indicators they managed to follow the doctrines of the postulates of the nineteenth-century economy that associating wealth with happiness. Today, it is obvious that no one would accept unique and satisfying their happiness as unit the amount of its per Capita income (GDP divided by its inhabitants), because really we all feel that they cohabit many other conditioning factors in our existential situation. Unfortunately, tends to be that ratio which preferably rulers handled for Calibrate progress and happiness of peoples. The Professor of the University of Maryland and a specialist in public policies, Carol Graham, has conducted a comprehensive study on the indices that determine the perception of happiness in many countries with different degrees of socio-economic development and published in his book Happiness around the World. The most significant conclusion that arrives is tremendously telling: with very few exceptions, for individuals the money is not the fundamental basis of happiness. It is met by both the so-called Easterlin law that defends that when money exceeds a certain limit (different according to each person and in each country), it ceases to be source of happiness (wealthy people is less than proportionally to increases its wealth).
But then, what is the factor most commonly valued throughout the world to determine happiness?. According to Dr. Graham, it is health. And so much so that it seems to establish a biunivocal correspondence by which the healthy people are more happy and happy people are healthier. However, in my opinion, admit all this leads us to a curious and obvious paradox because the money is necessary for every Government that it intends to improve the coverage of the health care benefits of its inhabitants. I.e. the wealth of a country Yes intervenes indirectly in the happiness of the people, because it determines the quality of what he contributes very directly to improve what they most value to reach it.
Arrived up to here we could infer that the Governments of countries with high per Capita income can count with greater resources to ensure the health of its inhabitants to improve its health system and therefore more facilitating collective happiness although, in reality, this would not be fully sufficient as the traditional concept of public health refers more to its palliative appearance which to preventive, which for now must continue to be mostly individual responsibility of everyone. Finally, in the case of happiness we continue giving turns to that with great success proclaimed the famous song of Cristina and the Stop in the 60 and which has today become the most famous triumvirate of vital self-help, no doubt by very few questioned: three things in the life: Salud, Dinero y Amor (). Love about that in this article I have not dared to write, waiting for some gentle reader wants and knows explain me his romantic relationship with the economy.