The bull market for humility

October 17th, 2008

This disproportionality has been tested to destruction by the recent
hysteria of City incomes. The result is that, after a decade of
widening wealth differentials, they should start to narrow.
Non-economic components of what we vaguely refer to as the good life
will take more prominence. The hedge-fund speculator will learn, with
Voltaire, that it is best to cultivate one's garden. This will surely
be a good thing.
Economists will move away from their failed models to study human history and behaviour. Britain might inch up the University of Michigan's world happiness survey from its present miserable ranking of 21st, below Mexico and the US.

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We might even see a resurgence of the "happiness" movement of the early
1970s; of Schumacher's "small is beautiful" economic theory. We might
find a new appreciation for the king of Bhutan's edict on the
importance of "gross national happiness", and for John Ralston Saul's
remark that the American mission of "life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness" was nothing to do with money. Saul called for a more subtle
understanding of contentment, "to escape the 20th-century idea that you
should smile because you're at Disneyland".

Here's to hope

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