But be careful of not adding to the confusion

Sir it sounds so utmost reasonable what Joseph Stiglitz mentions in “Towards a better measure of well-being” September 14 that I guess no one would, in principle, argue anything different. That said, there is clearly room for a warning, especially with the recent evidence provided by the crisis, on what can happen when someone arbitrarily plays around with the numbers.

The regulators fed up with adding AAapples with Bbbananas as fruits decided to give the first a risk-weight of 20 percent and the latter one of 100 percent when calculating the capital requirements of the banks and we ended up with such a confused world that most experts, FT, included had no idea of what bank leverages they were talking about, in fact most still don’t know.

And so whatever we do to measure what we want better, and a lot of improvements are indeed needed in this area, let us see that we just do not add to that confusion the politicians love to hide behind.

But what about a bachelor degree in being happily unemployed?

Sir, as you say June 14 happiness lessons might not be a subject to add to the national curriculum, but perhaps some core course in how to be an unemployed with socially acceptable behaviour could be useful in times of so much outsourcing and migration.

For a starter defend the right to be unhappy

Sir, Martin Wolf did not seem to be too happy, and rightfully so, when trying in “Why progressive taxation is not the route to happiness” June 6 to review a “new doctrine” on happiness proposed by Richard Layard of the London School of Economics. 

Perhaps this was because in his response he might have focused too much on the outliers of a normal distributed happiness curve, instead of going for that huge middle area where tranquil conformity plays a much bigger role, as there is nothing that attempts so much against happiness than being forced to be happy. 

Wolf is absolutely right saying that happiness is something that should be pursued individually and that governments cannot make us happy but, having said that, I suspect that I am more convinced that he is about that a society where the use of some progressive taxation is deemed as natural, must be a more fertile environment for the individual pursuit of happiness, than an everyone for themselves society. 

Next time you complain about having to pay progressive taxes think of those who have not reached your marginal rate and count your blessings... and think of it as a status symbol. Finally let us not forget that if you never have cried you have never really laughed either and so the first stone on our road to true happiness might in fact be to guarantee the possibility for the broken hearts in our life.