Government Can't Create Happiness

Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
WASHINGTON -- We ought to leave "happiness" to novelists and philosophers -- and rescue it from the economists and psychologists who think it can be distilled into a "science" and translated into pro-happiness policies. Fat chance. Government can often mitigate sources of unhappiness (starvation, unemployment, disease), but happiness is more than the absence of misery. If we could manufacture happiness, we could repeal the "human condition."Somehow this has escaped the social scientists who want to make happiness the goal of government. They argue that economic...

mens reading glasses low vision aids ansell gloves