From the monthly archives:

July 2006

The Happiest Zombies

July 30, 2006

In the same vein as David’s fascinating post below, here is a refreshingly accurate article on the relationship between wealth and self-reported happiness around the world from the New Scientist titled “Wealthy Nations Hold the Keys to Happiness.” The occasion of the article is the publication of a world map by Adrian White, a Ph.D. [...]

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Open Wide!

July 28, 2006

From last night’s AFF/Reason happy hour at ESL. I believe I am telling Yglesias and Logan that the entire field of international relations is full of crap, or some such thing.

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Chicago City Council to Low-wage Workers and Poor People: Eat Dirt!

July 27, 2006

The Chicago City Council has proved beyond doubt its aggressive hostility to the welfare of low-wage workers and low-income consumers by its approval of an ordinance that would forbid Chicagoans from legally entering into agreements to work for less than $10 an hour and $3 in benefits—even if they want to—with retailers with $1 [...]

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Making Stuff Up

July 20, 2006

So, it turns out that I wasn’t crazy when I couldn’t find Vanuatu in the World Database of Happiness, because it’s not there! Carl Bialik at the WSJ has the story. Apparently NEF just made up Vanuatu’s life satisfaction number by extrapolation from other countries. But, truly, this competely defeats the purpose of self-reported life [...]

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Vanuatu: Islands of Fire or Heaven on Earth?

July 13, 2006

I’ve got a big post up at Cato@Liberty on the New Economics Foundation’s silly study claiming Vanuatu to be the happiest place on Earth.

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I’m Baffled by Taxes as Truces in Positional Races

July 11, 2006

I’m suddenly confused about the logic of imposing higher taxes as a way of calling a “truce” in positional races. Help me.
Suppose everyone has a strong preference for higher relative income. Arms race logic implies that people will increase their effort to move up position, but that, in order not to get passed, others will [...]

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What’s the Point of Civil Society When the State Can Do it Worse for More?

July 6, 2006

I’ve got a new post up at Cato@Liberty about charity-bashing statists.

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A Declaration of Cognitive Independence?

July 3, 2006

Michael Shermer has a nice piece in Scientific American on confirmation bias, the process "whereby we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence." New neuroimaging studies are revealing exactly how it is that we avoid actually thinking about politics. Psychologist Drew Westin says:

Essentially, it appears [...]

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Happiness in the LA Times

July 3, 2006

I’m quoted in this morning’s LA Times (I think the piece is front page) in an article on happiness research. Unfortunately, I am quoted rather exactly, and therefore come off somewhat lacking in gravitas:

"Most of the things that have been published about the policy implications of happiness research have definitely had a big-government slant to [...]

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Kahneman-Krueger Science Article

July 2, 2006

Haven’t read it yet, but I’m seeing it all over. The useful thing about the new study is that it compares life-satisfaction survey answers with Kahneman’s day reconstruction method (basically, writing down what you did and how it made you feel at the end of the day. Highlights:
"If people have high income, they think they [...]

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Guns, Materialism, and Tim Kasser

July 1, 2006

Early in May, the New York Times ran an article, In Men, ‘Trigger-Happy’ May Be a Hormonal Impulse, reporting on a study by Tim Kasser of Knox College. The synopsis:
The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels.
They then seated the young men, one at a time, at a table in [...]

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