Happiness

A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom By ANDREW C. REVKIN
In Bhutan, happiness is

preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

They're thinking about what makes them happy. That's not what makes me happy.

The article also concedes that people in some relatively poor countries are happy.

Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found that Latin American countries, for example, registered far more subjective happiness than their economic status would suggest.

In contrast, countries that had experienced communist rule were unhappier than noncommunist countries with similar household incomes - even long after communism had collapsed.

So anyway, does that mean we'll stop looking at economic inequality as a bad thing?