Are you? Are your circumstances happy? Roof over the head, adequate food on the table, clothing adequate for purposes of modesty, comfort and warmth? Not in prison? The stuff of happiness, right?
But, if you are a liberal you aren't supposed to be. Happy. That's what Arthur C. Brooks sez, author of Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, published in 2007:
In Who Really Cares, he identifies the forces behind American charity: strong families, church attendance, earning one’s own income (as opposed to receiving welfare), and the belief that individuals-not government-offer the best solution to social ills.
Brooks goes on to say
six years later:
Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men; only about a fifth consider themselves very happy.
Pishtah below the twiddle:
Mr. Brooks gets taken apart by statistician Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University. His books include Bayesian Data Analysis; Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks; and Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. I'm not going to attempt to explicate his statistical logic, I refer you to the Washington Post.
The real message, though, is that survey responses can show a lot of different things. I think this discussion provides a strong argument for presenting a graph rather than trying to pull out patterns using sentences and paragraphs. A graph shows the big patterns, it also shows the complexity of the situation, in particular, a group such as conservative women who are more likely to say they are “very happy” and more likely to say they are “not too happy.” Instead of arguing over whether it’s appropriate to describe such a group as “particularly blissful,” we can just show people the data. I appreciate Quinn’s openness in sharing his analysis, and I hope that, in the future, media outlets such as the Times will make it easier for essayists and reporters to include graphs where appropriate. We’re used to thinking of graphs as a big production, but a well-designed graph can be formatted to take up not much more space than a paragraph of text.
I must refer to some recent studies done by a graduate student name of Paul Piff:
Paul Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at UC, Berkeley did seven studies about the behavior. His findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The first and second study showed wealthy people are more likely to break the law while driving.
Study No. 3 showed wealthy individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies.
Study No. 4 showed the rich were more likely to take valued goods and study No. 5 showed the rich are more willing to lie in a negotiation.
No. 6 showed the wealthy people are more likely to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize.
The final study, No. 7 showed the rich are more likely to endorse unethical behavior at work.
Don't wealthy people tend to be conservative? Doesn't the observed behavior of these people exhibit a disregard for others? An unawareness of others?
Disregard and unawareness of others is almost impossible for liberals. How can a sheltered, well-fed and clothed liberal be happy when there are so many others in the world who are nowhere near as fortunate?
If you are unhappy -- and you are unhappy for the right (ethical) reason, doesn't that give you a reason to be happy -- for a couple of seconds?
And, in regard to private charity versus "government handouts", the thinking of liberals that the overwhelming unhappiness of the world, hunger, homelessness, nakedness, illness and no access to healthcare, the horrors of warfare, are far beyond the powers of individual charity and must be dealt with at a national level -- financed collectively by our tax dollars, a reasonable and long-headed strategy.