Objectives There are three main objectives of national and international economic policy for the next half century: slowing down global warming; sustainability; and social justice.
Global Warming There needs to be a drastic reduction in the world output of greenhouse gases, especially in the first ten years.
There is a point at which the process will run away under its own steam, and the human contribution to its reduction will become useless. Though scientists are not yet agreed on when this point is, we must not stake the future of the world on the hope of a favourable answer.
Current ideas of changing our light bulbs, setting up a new profitable commodity market in carbon coupons issued by governments, congestion charges for driving our cars, and choosing shorter flights for our holidays are grossly inadequate. We cannot continue to use economic growth as the criterion for a successful economic policy and must reduce our standard of living. To fight an election on a programme of negative economic growth is ‘politically unrealistic’. The politicians are scared.
Sustainability also requires a reduction in consumption. The main point of current political concern (the only one in America!) is the diminishing of oil reserves.
Social Justice apart from its own merits is essential at national level because of the need for ‘fair shares’ if our standard of living is to be reduced; but more important because the Third World needs to be brought into the climate change policy. We cannot expect truly developing countries to stop developing. We must give them technical assistance to reduce the rate of increase of their emissions. The rich world will have to contribute much more to the reduction of emissions to compensate. If we feel this is all too difficult, then we are effectively killing our grandchildren.
Current Morality in the sense of the principles which actually guide our prejudices and actions, is:
To maximise profitability; To maximise our income; To maximise our consumption; To compete for status; To maximise economic growth.
It is not very original to point out that this does not make us all happy. A typical example is compulsory workaholism. Many successful white-collar workers are overpaid and overworked, and do not have enough time to for their families or to enjoy their wealth. The idea that good management involves proper staffing seems to have disappeared since around 1980. Many would prefer a 40 hour week to 50 hours for 4/5 of their current pay. The cost in broken homes and difficult children and depression is not the concern of management.
Happiness Richard Layard’s book Happiness – Lessons from a New Science, published in 2005 and now available in paperback, shows us that happiness can now be measured and research can show what increases or decreases happiness. We need to get everybody reading and talking about how we can all be happier. We should get polling organisations to keep making surveys of what increases happiness or misery. Politicians do not lead public opinion now. They try to offer what people want, mainly by looking at the media, who write what they think will increase their circulation. Eventually one political party will have the courage to campaign on a slogan like ‘Towards a happier world.’ Perhaps it is not wholly unrealistic to hope that this might happen within ten years.
So what we need is a sea change in the moral climate, or the current ethos, without relying on religious assumptions or moral preaching. Sceptics might consider two examples of such a change in recent times. The first is the fact that the affluent middle classes accepted a huge reduction in their standard of living in the 1940’s.
They lost their maids, their fashionable clothing and their interesting and tasty food. We all had the same rations, and were healthier for it. The poor were better nourished than before the war, and the rich were not worrying too much about obesity. This was accepted because of the unanimous opinion that we must win the war. The revolution towards social justice started in 1940 rather than 1945.
The second started around 1980, reversing the first.
Milton Friedman’s monetarism; the Reagan-Thatcher faith in free market forces as the panacea. This change of ethos converted even the Labour Party to the everlasting pursuit of growing wealth, and objections to gross inequality faded. This is where we are.
So where do we start? The progressive single-issue pressure groups are already working together. The next move is to the press and media; perhaps first the Guardian and the Independent, and if the Daily Mail gives a lot of publicity to ridiculing all this nonsense, the controversy over the next few years might become interesting. So I hope the introduction of the Science of Happiness might make the link between the ideal of saving the world and the defeatism about achieving it.
Denis Gildea wrote this paper in response to the 2007 SoF Annual Conference and thinks it is even more relevant now.