I’ve spent the past twenty years thinking about happiness. My Master’s Thesis was on focused Stoic ideas about happiness, my doctoral dissertation dealt with the evolution of Augustine’s understanding of happiness, and more recently, I’ve been doing some work on Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of happiness.  You’d think that, after almost 25 years fixated on the question of happiness, I’d know by now what happiness is and what the best way to become happy would be.  The sad truth is that the more I explore this question, the more my own thinking about happiness evolves and mutates.  Happiness, I’ve discovered, is one slippery concept and there’s a reason why philosophical questions about its attainment have been debated since ancient times.

But the more I study the problem of happiness, the more I come to realize that we Americans have some particularly screwy ideas about happiness that may in fact get in the way of our own long-term happiness.  In particular, we seem to think that real happiness is measured almost exclusively by our present economic conditions (stuff + now = happiness).  Happiness is typically linked to GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a measure of how much we are producing and consuming at a given time.  The presumption is that the higher the GDP, the happier the people of a nation must be.  Americans have one of the highest GDPs in the world, so naturally, we must be among the happiest people in the world, right?

But what if the very lifestyle that we are living in the present is a threat to our long-term sustainable happiness and well-being?  Imagine that we Americans are like heroin addicts.  An addict needs his fix all the time in order to be happy, but the approach that he takes to achieving this happiness (abusing drugs) all but ensures that he can’t sustain his happiness in the long-term.  What if our happiness is like the happiness of the heroin addict?   In fact, using GDP to measure a people’s happiness is like asking a drug pusher whether an addict is happy while he is dwelling in a drug-induced state.  The addict may think he’s happy, and the pusher would say he’s happy, but would anyone of sense really believe that this is sustainable happiness?

Fortunately, there’s another way to measure the happiness of people rather than simply by using GDP.  Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation has developed what he calls the Happy Planet Index.  Marks takes for granted that things like a person’s present perception of happiness and his or her life expectancy are important criteria of happiness.  But he also takes into consideration the impact that an individual’s lifestyle has on the planet when determining whether that individual’s happiness is ultimately sustainable.  The formula he uses for making this determination looks like this:

• Experienced well-being:  people around the world are asked to describe on a scale of 1-10 their experienced state of well-being, with 0 representing the worst possible life and 10 representing the best possible life.
• Life expectancy:  based upon the 2011 United Nations Development Report.
• Ecological Footprint: basically examines how much of the world’s resources are used by individuals in different nations to sustain their lifestyles. 

Here’s the way Marks explains his approach to happiness during his 2010 Ted Talk.

So, if instead of thinking about happiness purely in terms of the ability to consume in the present, we think about happiness in a more sustainable way, how does the United States rank compared to other nations of the world?  The Happy Planet Index has a nifty traffic light score to rank individual nations:  green (good), yellow (middling), and red (bad).

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/data/

As you can see, the results are radically different depending upon which criteria for well-being we are looking at.  But if we’re really concerned with sustainable happiness, we need to look in particular at the HPI map.  As you explore this map, consider which are the best countries to live in for sustainable happiness and which are the worst.

I’d like to propose that what Marks says about the happiness of different countries applies to the happiness of individuals as well.  Think about your own life, for example.  Do you perceive yourself to be living a happy and healthy life?  If you do, that’s terrific, but, as Marks points out, you also need to consider whether your happiness is ultimately sustainable.

To determine this, take a few moments and complete the following Ecological Footprint survey.  Try to answer the questions to the best of your ability, and, if you’re uncertain about the answers to any of the questions, just make the best educated guess possible.

https://www.powerhousemuseum.com/online/bigfoot/

At the end of the survey, see how many hectares it takes for you to live the lifestyle that you do.  1.9 hectares would be ecologically ideal, but anything under 2.5 hectares would indicate a more or less sustainable lifestyle.  What was your score on this survey?  How many planets would it take to sustain the kind of lifestyle that you live if everyone on the planet chose to adopt it?

The question that we all need to ask ourselves in the end is whether the perceptions we have about our own happiness correspond with the reality of whether or not our happiness is ultimately sustainable.  Marks seems to suggest that, if there’s a real dichotomy between the two, our happiness is based upon delusion—a delusion that I would argue is similar in many ways to the delusion an addict would have about his own happiness.  At the very least, becoming aware of this dichotomy should make you start to ask some very fundamental questions about the validity of our Western, materialistic notions about happiness in a world characterized by an ever-increasing scarcity of resources.  

"Homo Consumens is the man whose main goal is not primarily to own things, but to consume more and more, and thus to compensate for his inner vacuity, passivity, loneliness and anxiety….He mistakes thrill and excitement for joy and happiness and material comfort for aliveness; satisfied greed becomes the meaning of life, striving for it a new religion. The freedom to consume becomes the essence of human freedom."

Erich Fromm. “The Application of Humanist Psychoanalysis to Marx's Theory" in Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. New York: Doubleday, 1965.

I like to think that I’m totally immune to the lure of consumerism.  After all, I’ve spent the past 15 years lecturing students on the importance of voluntary simplicity both as a means to prevent further environmental degradation to our planet, but also as a way to find greater happiness in life. That latter benefit of reducing consumption is often lost on 20-something-year-olds who have grown up fervently believing that meaning and happiness in life are connected to the ability to buy whatever one wants, whenever one wants, whether one has the funds to do so or not.  I’ve found that, even when I show these students hard data from the field of human psychology clearly demonstrating that the “need to always have more” is linked to  personal unhappiness and that the happiest people on the planet are actually those who are the most immune to the lure of consumption, they simply don’t buy it (no pun intended). 

But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am setting a positive example for my students, right?  After all, I’m living in a house that is much smaller than I could afford, I drive a 17 year old car (by choice), rarely eat out in restaurants, and generally wear clothes till they fall apart (literally!).  On the surface of things, I am the poster boy for the voluntary simplicity movement.

And yet, deep in the marrow of my being, I am as easily seduced by the lure of American consumerism as the most fashion-conscious student in my environmental ethics class.    Just recently, for example, I found myself wanting to replace the perfectly adequate cell-phone that I had been using for about four years with a smart new Iphone.  The new phone cost hundreds of dollars more than the old phone did and that new plan that I had to take out to get it was also more expensive, but at least I could now say that I had the smartest, most sophisticated, most stylish cell phone on the market.  And I was ever so happy—that is, until I saw a colleague of mine with the new Iphone 4s with even cooler features than the model I had.  And then I found myself becoming envious and thinking that my own Iphone just didn’t seem quite as special any more.

Then there’s the issue of my car.  I am adamant about the fact that I will not buy a new car until the one I have—a 1995 Toyota Corolla—starts to become unreliable or cost more to maintain than it is worth.  17 years later, I still have the same car, and it is still chugging along perfectly fine.  There are absolutely no mechanical issues with the car, but it certainly doesn’t provide as smooth and quiet a ride as a new car would, and lately, the paint on the roof of the car has begun to wear off, making the car look rather shabby.  In fact, I’ve been told that I have the ugliest car on campus, and that’s probably true:  I doubt that even the most cash-strapped freshman would ever be caught dead driving a car as aesthetically challenged as mine. 

Now, when someone asks me about my car, I tell them proudly that I’ll be damned if I ever get suckered into buying a new car before I absolutely need one.  But, in fact, I’m starting to feel just a little self-conscious about being seen driving a car like mine or parking it at the Mall amidst all the shiny new SUVs that people on Long Island tend to own.  And this year, I’ve even begun fantasizing about getting a new car—not anything excessive mind you, but something small, cute, and fun like a Honda Fit.  Every time I see someone driving one of these cars, I almost automatically think to myself:  “Why should they get to drive a nice new car, while I am forced to drive this piece of crap!  “After all,” I reason to myself, “I am a college professor and do have a reputation to maintain.” The Ugliest Car on CampusSo you see, although I would like to believe that I am impervious to the insatiable desire for more than I need, this really isn’t the case.  I am as much a part of the species homo consumens as anyone.  The only difference is that I’ve read enough to have some ideas about what the root causes of the consumeristic desires that drive our society might be.   I think that these causes are threefold:

1. Contemporary Americans have come to identify who they are as human beings with what they own.  The more trendy things I own, then, the more worthy I am as a human being.  Conversely, if I live in a modest house, don’t wear the latest clothes, and don’t drive a nice car, then something is wrong with ME as a human being.   In 21st century America we are judged, not by the “content of our characters,” but by the stuff we possess.
   
2. We have been convinced by modern advertising that we should have as much as our neighbors do.   In the past, however, our neighbors could only afford to buy things if they saved for them.  But the advent of the credit industry means that ordinary people can buy things they don’t have the actually money for.  We don’t know, for example, that our neighbors really can’t afford to live in the McMansion that they recently built or drive their new Lexus, but we think they can, and that makes us feel inferior.  So we too are compelled to take out loans and live well beyond our means, just to “keep up with the Jonses.”  
   
3. In the absence of authentic religious belief, Americans have made a religion out of consumption.  If we really believed in God and were convinced that this life is not all that there is, having so much stuff wouldn’t mean quite as much to us.  After all, how could owning even the most sophisticated things in the world—fancy jewelry, designer clothes, etc.—ever compare with what we have to look forward to in the next life?  Objectively, then, if Americans really believe in anything, it is that salvation comes from buying power—the ability to satisfy our insatiable desires with more and more stuff.  God is dead, but at least we have Walmart—or Neiman Marcus, if you prefer—to  provide us with ultimate meaning in life.
   

These are just a few thoughts that came to me as I reflected on the roots of our consumerism in the United States.  I’d love to hear what you think about this.  Is the problem of consumerism really as bad as I think it is (do you personally fall victim to it?)?  And what do you think that the ultimate root of this need to always acquire more and more is?
   

According to a recent report issued by the Mercatus Center, a libertarian-leaning think tank out of George Mason University, one-third of all Americans received some form of means-based public assistance, like Medicaid or food stamps, in 2010. The report then goes on to say that when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half the country—148 million Americans—were living in a household receiving some form of government benefits.

This comes at a time when less than half of all Americans are paying income tax.

It makes your blood boil, doesn’t it? Just think about it: half the country footing the bill for the benefits of the other half; the industrious ones being crippled by onerous tax burdens to prop up those who are too lazy or stupid to take care of themselves.

The problem with this report is that Social Security, Medicare, and even unemployment benefits are not “gifts” from the federal government. People pay into these programs throughout the course of their working careers, and, therefore, they can hardly be considered government entitlements. So the 50% number is pure propaganda designed to enrage those who look for any excuse at all to bash any and all government programs—even successful ones like Social Security and Medicare .

This is not to say that we don’t have a problem in this country, however. When one-third of the country is so poor that they require public assistance and when one-half of all taxpayers make so little that the government can’t even tax them, that should concern all of us, because it means that our country is on an unsustainable economic path. The question is how do we interpret this data.

Economic conservatives like those at the Mercatus Center and the Heritage Foundation would argue that the size of the American government itself is the issue. They would probably maintain that government programs designed to assist the poor actually create a perverse incentive not to work, while at the same time penalizing those who are the most industrious in the country. The solution, then, would be to dramatically reduce the size of government, thus lowering taxes, giving wealth creators (i.e., the rich) more money to invest, and creating jobs for those Americans who actually want to work. To do this, they advocate privatizing some current government programs (Social Security, for example) and entirely eliminating other programs (Medicaid) and troublesome government agencies (The Environmental Protection Agency, among others).

Progressives, on the other hand, would interpret this data as evidence that the middle class is being squeezed economically to the point of oblivion and that our public policies, which are skewed in favor of the top 1%, are creating a nation of rich and poor. If 50% of Americans pay no taxes, they would argue, it’s because they aren’t making anywhere near enough to be taxed in the first place. Cutting government programs like unemployment benefits, Social Security or Medicare is exactly the wrong thing to do, especially at this time, they would argue, because all this will do is push more Americans into the ranks of the poor. Taking their refrain from Franklin Roosevelt, progressives would argue that, especially during difficult economic times (i.e., right now), what we need is an even stronger safety net reestablished for the most vulnerable Americans and large-scale public spending to stimulate the economy.    

So what’s the right way to interpret the data put out by the Mercatus Center? This issue, I believe, gets to the heart of politics in the United States. It pits those who believe that “government is the problem” (conservatives/libertarians) against those who believe that government has an important role to play in insuring that all citizens have a decent minimum standard of living and have access to those goods that are vital for human flourishing—employment at a living wage, adequate health care, and some degree of economic security in their old age (progressives/liberals).

So which side of this issue do you come down on and why?

Some of my colleagues on the faculty think that my emphasis on income inequality as one of the biggest problems in the country today is misguided. One of my thoughtful friends from the Business Department, for example, while acknowledging that income inequality is "a problem and an issue," disputes the idea that this inequality is "the key driver of what ails the US economy."

I also heard supporters of Wall Street argue that the fact that the top 10% of the population is doing so well is a sign that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing as good capitalists--generating wealth. And that wealth, they argue, will eventually be put to good use, expanding business and creating jobs once there is a climate of greater economic certainty in the country (i.e., once Obama is driven out of office).

I've argued that the very inability of business people to understand the anxieties that Americans are experiencing is what is fueling the kinds of protests that we are seeing going on all around the country. And since (as the above graph clearly indicates) the richest Americans are getting richer at the expense of the average worker, these protests are only likely to get more extreme in the future as the middle class is forced to suffer with years of potential stagnation.

What we are experiencing, in fact, is a new Gilded Age--one in which the wealthiest Americans control more wealth, power, and political influence than they have almost at any other point in American history. Recent data clearly indicates that the wealthiest Americans now control almost exactly the same percentage of the nation's total income as they did at the beginning of the Great Depression. Income inequality in itself is not necessarily a problem. But the kind of radical inequality that we have now means that those with excessive wealth are able to buy elected officials of their own liking and lobby to weaken financial regulations and environmental protections (as they are currently doing). It means that we no longer have a government "by the people, for the people, and of the people"--a true democracy in other words--but a corporatocracy--rule by corporate interests for their own benefit.

This is not simply a "problem and an issue." It's a catastrophe for our democratic institutions.

During the Great Depression, it took someone like Franklin Roosevelt to save American capitalism from it's own excesses, greed, and shortsightedness. The rich didn't appreciate him for the financial regulations he put in place as part of the New Deal, but, in fact, Roosevelt was probably the greatest friend American capitalism had at the time. By moderating the excesses of capitalism, one could argue, Roosevelt gave us 40 years of economic growth that benefited business owners and workers alike.

Unfortunately, we have no Franklin Roosevelt on the public stage today. Republicans want to roll back all economic regulations and destroy the few government programs that still exist to protect the average American, and Democrats are too timid and corrupt to ever propose truly progressive legislation like we had during the New Deal or Johnson's Great Society.

So until the next FDR comes along, we probably have to resign ourselves to years of economic instability and hardship for the poor and middle class. But we certainly shouldn't expect those who are suffering most simply to disappear. There will be many more protests ahead of us, and these protests may in fact turn violent, as they already have in Europe.

That, unfortunately, is simply the price we will have to pay for our moral, political, and economic blindness. Consider it karma worked out on a societal level. In the end, we will most certainly reap what we have sown economically.

...and I'd hate to be working on Wall Street when that happens!

Most of us have grown up with the belief that success in life is to be measured almost entirely in economic terms. Whether we have “made it” or not in life all depends upon factors like how large our home is, what sort of elaborate stuff we possess, and how many exotic vacations we can take in a given year. We have also been taught, directly or indirectly, that the greater our buying power, the more worth we have as human beings. Those who cannot—or will not—strive to become masters of capital are perceived as somehow morally deficient and missing out on what has come to be optimistically known as the “American Dream.” In fact, this dream is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by corporate-owned media to encourage the sort of excessive consumption that has driven the American economy to the point of inevitable collapse.

During the past few years, I have taken several trips to Southern Florida to visit family members living in Fort Lauderdale. Only two years ago, I remember being amazed at how opulent the lifestyle was in places like Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and Ft. Lauderdale, even compared to the excesses of my native Long Island. Skyrocketing real estate prices had encouraged speculation in the housing market, and middle class entrepreneurs were buying up all the homes that they could get their hands on in order to capitalize on what seemed to be a golden ticket to easy riches. Expensive restaurants were filled to capacity, high-end stores in mammoth shopping malls were doing record business, and sales of luxury items like yachts and sporty convertibles (a must for men going through mid-life crises) were booming.

The situation changed dramatically when I returned for this year’s visit. For one thing, due to the inevitable housing crisis housing, prices have plummeted 15-20% and sales of existing homes have dropped 28%. Visiting a colleague in Boca Raton—one of the great meccas of conspicuous consumption in the United States—I was shocked to see foreclosure signs all over the city and million dollar homes sitting vacant with no one to buy them. The situation for middle class homeowners in Florida is even more precarious, since their consumption over the past three decades has been even more inextricably intertwined with the equity in their homes. In a Sun-Sentinel poll conducted on April 4th, one-third of respondents in Broward County, where the poll was conducted, reported being afraid of losing their jobs in the current economic downturn. In short, things are not looking good for the overall health of the economy of southern Florida.

Given all this, one would assume that people--like my dear extravagant sister living in Fort Lauderdale--would begin to dramatically decrease their levels of consumption and try to live a bit more frugally—at least until this current economic storm passes. If this is happening, I have not noticed it. The high priced malls in Boca and Fort Lauderdale seem to be as full of shoppers as ever, the waiting times to get into decent restaurants doesn’t seem to have diminished at all, and the lines for $5.00 frappuccinos at Starbucks hasn’t seemed to have gotten any shorter.

All this “data” is anecdotal, of course, but it is not at all dissimilar from what I have observed elsewhere. The economy is tanking, but Americans seem incapable of doing the logical and prudent thing, which would be to cut back—perhaps dramatically—on their bloated lifestyles. As mentioned earlier, the explanation for this paradox is quite simple: the identities of most Americans are so wrapped up with their ability to consume that any attempt to reduce consumption would create a massive sense of identity-loss (If we are not the stuff that we possess, then who or what are we?).

The corporate-owned media, of course, would like to maintain this link between human identity and consumption, so everything we see on television or in the movies, or read in our daily newspapers and magazines, reinforces the idea that happiness can only be attained by buying into the materialistic lifestyle that has come to dominate American culture. But we really shouldn’t cast all the blame on greedy corporations and their media stooges. The real fault lies primarily in us. We are the ones who refuse to recognize that happiness can’t come from owning a $300 pair of sunglasses or a $500 pocketbook. Until we start to accept this ridiculously simple fact, and to change our lives accordingly, we will continue to be consumed by the very items which we ourselves so lasciviously consume.

In a bipartisan effort to stem the tide of home foreclosures that are threatening to bring down the American economy, members from both parties in Congress are working on new legislation to assist struggling homeowners. Some ideas being tossed around are:

• 200 million dollars to expand counseling programs for those at risk of foreclosure
• 10 billion dollars in tax-exempt bonds for local housing authorities to refinance subprime loans.
• 4 billion dollars in grants to local governments to buy foreclosed properties.
• 15,000 in tax credits for the purchase of foreclosed homes currently sitting vacant on the market. (NYT 4/2/08].

My basic problem with legislation of this sort is that I question whether it will really help those who deserve assistance the most - poor and working class families that were suckered into taking on mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Instead, it seems like a gift to the irresponsible banks and mortgage companies that pushed subprime loans in the first place, since they are not really being asked to take serious losses for their risky behavior.

With the exception of the first proposal, which has some merits, the legislation being offered will ultimately do nothing more than fuel another round of speculation in the housing market. Haven't we had enough gambling already in the housing market? Do we really need vulturous housing speculators to try to profit yet again from the misery of beleaguered homeowners? Aren't these many of the same people who brought on the housing crisis in the first place?

I have two additional - and prehaps more fundamental - problems with legislation of this sort: first, it makes prudent taxpayers, who have done the right thing by living within their means, foot the bill for those who were reckless and irresponsible in their behavior. Most Americans are hardworking and live fairly frugal lives, usually purchasing homes that they can reasonably afford given their levels of income. Many of these noble creatures probably would have loved to have been able to move into more spacious homes in more attractive communities, but recognized the imprudence of stretching their resources too thin. In short, these people, who ought to be rewarded for their fiscal responsibility, would actually be punished by having to bail out their recklessly selfish neighbors.

Second, the legislation being proposed fails to recognize a basic problem with the American economy that everyone is afraid to acknowledge--namely, that it is fundamentally unsound and needs to be dramatically reformed if it is to survive in the 21st century. The kind of freemarket capitalism that we advocate here in the U.S. is almost exclusively focused on short-term (i.e., quarterly) growth at the expense of long-term economic sustainability. In order to achieve the exorbident levels of growth that corporations have come to expect, Americans since the 1970s have been conned into spending more and more of their disposible income on crap they don't really need. Once Americans went though all of their savings to buy bigger homes, flashier cars, and more stylish refrigerators, multinational corporations had to figure out a way to keep them consuming when the logical thing for Americans to have done would have been to reduce consumption and pay off their debt.

This is where cheap credit came into play - mainly in the form of easily attainable credit cards and home equity loans. But now Americans have been driven into the highest levels of personal debt since the depression, and they can't tap into the equity in their homes because they are worth less than they paid for them.

In short, the "hens have come home to roost," and the result must inevitably be a collapse of our finacial systems, one of the most severe recessions that we have seen in some time, and large-scale suffering for the most vulnerable Americans. The very nature of American free-market capitalism necessitates this end. Pray to whatever gods you worship for deliverance, but nothing short of a miracle will save our economy.

I am convinced that there will be an economic melt-down during the next few years. But that doesn't mean that everyone need suffer equally. Those Americans who have practiced the art of voluntary simplicity already know how to survive in a world where goods become more expensive, jobs more scarce, and earning more meager. Those who know how to live happily with less will do just fine. And one positive thing that could come out of this economic crisis is that even more Americans will come to the realization that the consumptive lifestyle neither brings happiness nor peace. Rather than looking at the housing crisis as an unmitigated disaster, then, we should perhaps begin to see it for what it really is: a golden opportunity for all of us to reconsider how we our living our lives and take the necessary steps to live more simply and sanely.