Jeb(!)'s End: Growth, Not Happiness

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Thursday July 09, 2015 · 9:38 AM PDT

2015/07/09 · 09:38

I used to tell a joke (or maybe it was quoting somebody). "They say money can't buy happiness, but it's not happiness I'm after. It's money."

I always thought it was funny, because it's sort of, disturbingly, true. To me, it seems that our society is after money, as an end, and not a means to happiness. I feel like too often we lose sight of the fact that the quest for happiness and the quest for money, may not lie along the same path.

Enter Jeb Bush. His campaign is motivated by one primary goal (thus far): economic growth - 4% growth per year in GDP. That is the end, not the means to happiness. Proof: Yesterday, in telling America what we need to do to achieve this end, he said (among other things) "it means people need to work longer hours." This will achieve growth, but not happiness. As slinkerwink pointed out in a great post: Americans already work far more hours than any other country: ~3 more hours per week than in Japan, ~5 more hours per week than in the UK, and about 10 more hours per week than in France. And we're not any happier because of it. Would an 80 hour work week really make us happier? Of course not. But think about the growth!

Dear Jeb. Pull your head out of your ass and recognize that growth is not the goal, happiness is. If we can achieve happiness with 0% growth, that's fine! Why must we always work more hours and produce more useless crap? Yes, it enriches the owners of the companies that produce the crap. But the rest of us, well, we'd just like a few more hours with friends and family. That is what gives us happiness.

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