Archive for year 2009

The 5th International Gross National Happiness Conference in Foz de Igusau, Brazil is off to a great start. They expected 350 participants and they had to turn away registrations when they had more than 800. Dr. Susan Andrews, organizer of the conference began the day with a long presentation  as part of the concluding session of a National Conference on citizen efforts to preserve good water quality. This was followed by a very clear keynote address by the Prime Minister of Bhutan. Day 2 saw the real start of the working conference with presentations about on-going projects in Canada, Bhutan and Brazil. Professor Eric Zencey, from Montpelier, Vermont gave a presentation on on GDP-GNH.

Linda Wheatley, Tom Barefoot, Eric Zencey and Marie Hamilton are representing GNHUSA at the conference.  A very well developed effort to implement GNH at the town level is underway in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. They have refined a questionaire and accumulated sufficient statistics to learn how the Happiness Indicators are working and what are some of the local needs that are illuminated as detracting from happiness. We also saw very impressive commitments to the application of GNH principles inside and outside corporations by Natura, Brazil’s largest cosmetics company and Comig, a large electricity supplier.

We will post details of the presentations when they become available.

Economic Recovery: GDP is not a good measure of progress.

October 29th — Eric Zencey, of Montpelier, Vermont, Professor at Empire College, NY is featured in a story on the BBC’s The World program. Prof. Zencey wrote an Op Ed piece in the NY Times this summer GDP-RIP, a critique of the over reliance on GDP, which has become less effective as a measure of progress, as it fails to account for the environmental or social costs of a transaction and without recognizing social and personal well-being and the value of a sustainable environment. New efforts such as GNH are designing new sets of measures to better guide us forward to a sustainable and happy future for all.  Listen to the story.

Course Description of the Happiness Seminar at Amherst  College, Fall 2009.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson breaks with John Locke’s emphasis on “life, liberty and property” and instead asserts that the basic rights (“inalienable”) of humans are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. In this bold move, Jefferson placed “happiness” at the core of the political and personal concern. In this seminar, we will examine how we define, measure, and attempt to generate and maintain happiness. Our examination will serve as an introduction to the many methods of inquiry and articulation available at the College. We will read, discuss and write about written texts from philosophy, political science, history, literature, psychology and economics. We will watch, discuss and write about films from different eras that demonstrate examples of “happiness.” In addition, we will undertake exercises that will allow students to become mindful of their own well-being and will allow them to have direct experiences of the issues we address. Classes will be held to generate conversations about the texts, films and exercises. There will be frequent, short writing assignments on the materials of the seminar and one relatively long final paper. Thus, students will gain practice in the articulation of their ideas and internal states through speaking, writing and self-awareness.

Daniel P. Barbezat Professor of Economics  www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/dpbarbezat

Tom Barefoot, GNHUSA

Blog about Stats

This active blog is an interface between technical discussion and practice in the use of Stats to help us chart our way toward social progress.
http://blogstats.wordpress.com/

FDR’s 2nd Bill of Economic Rights

This rarely heard recording of FDR’s Fireside Chat on January 11, 1944 lays out a vision of economic rights for every citizen. Rights that support Democracy instead of Dictatorship.  Rights that meet the basic needs of individuals and families and provide a basis for well-being. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwUL9tJmypI 

“Small is Beautiful”

GNH ideas have been brewing in economic and social science circles for decades — but today, the urgency of actualizing those ideas is gaining momentum. Witness The Sun’s decision to reprint E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 essay, “Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered,” in the October ‘09 issue. Schumacher compares “modern economists” with a Buddhist economic approach, very similar to GNH concepts. Here’s an excerpt:

“The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicty and nonviolence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern — amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results. For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the ’standard of living’ by the amount of annual consumpriton, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is ‘better off’ than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to provide the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”

Makes sense to me!

– Ginny Sassaman

South Korea adopting GNH ideas to replace GDP.

“The government has recently unveiled a plan to create its own quality of life indicator, the “National Happiness Index,” taking quality of life into consideration. The indicator may be seen as a tool to realize a philosophy reflected in the president’s Liberation Day address that underscored the importance of further improving the people’s standard of living. In fact, people’s common purpose in life may be summarized as the pursuit of happiness. Recently, much multidimensional research has been done to explore various views on the nature of happiness and how to pursue it.Though there have been no firm conclusions, a few matters have come to light. Research findings show that there is a close relationship between the characteristics of each society and the abundance of happiness. This demonstrates that developing happiness can be a realistic policy goal. “

Read full article 

It’s Contagious!

The other night, I ran into a friend at our local general store. She was excited about the new Facebook group, Gross National Happiness American Project (you can do a search, if you’re on Facebook). This was her first introduction to GNH concepts, and it really lit a fire — not only for her, but for everyone she talks to. She said she’s been studying sustainability, and now thinks she should focus her sustainability studies on GNH. Cool! She also said, “This is like a virus! Everyone I talk to thinks this is great.”

Of course, it’s a very healthy virus — so feel free to spread it around.

Ginny Sassaman

Not much Happiness at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh September 24-25, 2009

With almost all press coverage of the G20 upstaged by the highly televised disclosure of Iran’s Uranium reprocessing facility,  it has been difficult to find out what actually happened in the meetings. The most reported outcome was that the G20 would become the main body for global economic consultation, with the G8 remaining for global strategic and security issues.

Find the official White House Leader’s Statement on the G20 here. http://www.pittsburghsummit.gov/mediacenter/129639.htm

Regarding restructuring global economies and institutions, it appears that nothing concrete was agreed upon, so it looks like business as usual. Nothing was done about curbing the incentives to short term individual gain (giant bonuses) in the financial institutions.

Nothing concrete was agreed regarding re-regulation of the financial institutions and strengthening regulatory agencies, except some small possible changes at the IMF.

On the Climate Change issues, preparatory to the Copenhagen meetings, there was a pledge to work to reduce the $300 Billion in government subsidies for fossil fuels over the medium term.

President Sarkozy of France had planned to introduce GNH indicator proposals at the meetings, but there was no mention in the final Leader’s statement.