Billionaire: Free Market Essential for Happiness

[Octafish]

This explains a lot...



...from enemies domestic and foreign to policies at home and abroad:

Kochs put a happy face on free enterprise

Consider the Source: Free market system leads to well-being

By Chris Young
Center for Public Integrity, June 25, 2014

Editor’s note: This story is one in a continuing series on Washington, D.C.’s information industry. The series seeks to illuminate the sometimes-misleading methods used by special interest groups to gain support for their agendas from government and average Americans.

When Arthur C. Brooks stepped on stage in December, the influential conservative’s mission was simple, yet ambitious: “If I do my job,” Brooks began his speech, “in the next few minutes I’m going to give you the secret to happiness.”

Standing before large block letters that spelled “H-A-P-P-I-N-E-S-S,” the charismatic president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, explained how genetics, major life events and choices all contribute to one’s well-being.

Brooks mentioned the importance of forging close relationships with family, promoted charitable giving and emphasized that “money doesn’t buy happiness.”

Nearing the end of his nearly 20-minute speech, Brooks said happiness also depends on … free markets?

“The earned-success system that brings you happiness is the system of free enterprise that lifts people out of poverty,” Brooks said. “Don’t work for the stateism, the collectivism that suppresses this,” he added. “Work for the free enterprise that makes this possible.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/25/14988/kochs-put-happy-face-free-enterprise

That all would be great if the game, playing field and referees weren't, ah, fixed in favor of the billionaire and War Inc.

[rogerashton]

1. We do know that

1) People who are employed are happier than people who are unemployed (even if they have the same income)
2) Business proprietors are happier than non-proprietors.

This information comes from questionnaire studies.

[Octafish]

2. That is great and good.

I vote for Democrats who support peace and prosperity. And, as a Democrat, I work toward the day when all who need work are employed and all who wish to be proprietors are encouraged in their endeavors.

As for the Koch brothers and their toadies, I'd like to see them pay their fair share of taxes.

As things stand now, they don't.

[Warpy]

4. Well, unless the unemployed people are retired with enough to live on

I'm a lot happier now. If anything, it's because I'm no longer continuing to wreck my body doing a physically demanding job--nursing--that's hard enough on 20 somethings.

I live alone, work on fiber when I feel like it, keep my own weird hours.

[BillZBubb]

3. The myth of the free market lives on...nt

[Octafish]

6. Tyler Cowen wrote an Op-Ed saying economy needs war in the New York Times.

He seems a particularly interesting tool of War Inc, from eugenics and depopulation to making the peace dividend something that never will happen. He was mentioned in the OP's article:

The five-member advisory board of the Well-Being Initiative includes Ángel Cabrera, president of George Mason University and Tyler Cowen, a popular libertarian professor at the school who has been dubbed “America’s Hottest Economist.”

Where we've heard of that guy:

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

[on point]

5. Free enterprise is an incomplete broken model that leads to bad results

It doesn't account properly for the commons, requires an open unsustainable where now it is obvious we live in closed system that needs a sustainable model. It worked well for a time but has reached the end of life. Time for creative destruction on a system level

[Octafish]

7. Thank you for putting it into words.

Members of the "money trumps peace" crowd have used the US Treasury to enrich their cronies and class. For the cost of the Iraq War, we could have replaced the nation's energy grid with a sustainable, environmentally-safe system. That's using the technology we have and money that has been wasted to kill people in the name of Big Oil and our friends who bank in Switzerland.

We need a new system. One based on peace, problem solving and prosperity. We know what needs to be done. We just need our political leaders to stop representing the elites and start to put into action a plan that not only meets the challenges, but helps the nation and humanity thrive on levels greater than the economic.