Throwdown in Midtown
We won! From my vantage on the stage, I’d say the crowd swung from 30/70 against Tyler and me at the beginning to about 55/45 in our favor at the end. Sachs basically spent the entire time complaining that the United States does not have the politics of the readership The Nation, which I think must have struck a good deal of the audience — many of whom came to see him — as evasively off topic. I simply agreed that we have a bad president, are involved in a pointless war, and that we most certainly have not implemented Jeffrey Sachs’ policy preferences. And I repeatedly emphasized that the proposition was about how Americans are doing in the pursuit of happiness, about which there is a great deal of evidence, and was not a referendum on the Bush years. Stevenson I think was hampered by the fact that the happiness data simply doesn’t show that Americans are unhappy. She pushed hard on negative externalities from positional arms races, but I think that’s a bit hard for an audience to grasp when stated, but not really explained. Plus, its a theory-driven, not a data-driven argument, and plain evidence is simply more persuasive. And if you ever have to be in a debate, get Tyler as your partner. That helps a lot.
I have to say I was completely stunned by the scale of the event. I had no idea that the venue would be a grand old bank with a soaring domed ceiling, that there would be a red carpet and red velvet ropes, that there would be 400 people there with a giant screen and 30 foot red Economist banners behind us on the stage. It was probably the most exciting intellectual event I have taken part in, and I’ve never been so nervous. So I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to have (I think) nailed my closing statement, or how much of a thrill it was to see all those red fans go up in the final vote.
Pre-debate highlight: Sachs said he read my happiness paper and that it was “excellent” and that he “learned a lot”.
Oh… and the debate continues in my mind. At one point in the main event Stevenson cut me off to express incredulity that welfare benefits didn’t improve the average happiness of the unemployed. I certainly wasn’t making it up. I don’t know what explains the finding, but there are a number of reasons why this isn’t at all implausible. First, as she was arguing, the effect of income on happiness is often weak. Second, surveys show that unemployment is very depressing. It often involves a painful loss of status. And social networks are often work-related, so the unemployed often lose friends and end up feeling isolated. Welfare transfers may do little to boost happiness under those sad conditions. Third, there is a stigma to “the dole,” so the effects of income from welfare transfers may be different from market income. Fourth, generous welfare benefits reduce the incentive to quickly reenter the labor market, which may extend the average depressing period of unemployment. Anyway, I felt like she was trying to have this worse than both ways: denying the normal economist’s assumption that income translates straightforwardly into utility when it is market income, but then acting like its simply crazy that income wouldn’t translate straightforwardly into utility when it’s a government transfer.
Here’s Tyler’s account, and accounts from a number of his commenters who attended.
W00t!
November 11th, 2007 23:42
Yay! Bravo! Wish I’d been there!
November 12th, 2007 10:55
Wish I could’ve been there too. Good Job!
November 12th, 2007 12:09
Is audio or video of this debate avaliable anywhere?
November 12th, 2007 13:11
I’m pretty sure it will be. I’ll post info on the blog as soon as I have it.
November 12th, 2007 13:43
perhaps some sampling effects may explain the results… 30-40 dollar tickets on a Saturday afternoon, plus the marketing of the event to Economist readers, and the nature of the event itself: an academic debate. Demographics tend to skew one way.
Not that you didn’t do a great job though! I waved a red fan both times
November 12th, 2007 14:46
Will, you certainly had the rhetoric skill on your side and your opponents were weak. One point, however, you got completely backwards: Eastern-Germans were most definitely not happier after the reunification of their country with the West. On the contrary, a large number of them wished the wall back—in spite of the fact that they were better off. Compared to their compatriots in the West they lagged behind and that made them very unhappy.
(Cross-post from http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/11/last-nights-deb.html?cid=89654798#c89654798 )
November 12th, 2007 16:32
I was there and you completely blew Sachs out of the water, bravo! Definitely a new fan of your blog, thanks!
November 12th, 2007 16:49
[...] for them.” Conversely, you can find things that you think should make people happy but don’t. Will Wilkinson proves the latter point when he says… The debate continues in my mind. At one point in the main event Stevenson cut me [...]
November 12th, 2007 17:05
Pwned!
November 12th, 2007 17:18
Oreg,
See here
November 12th, 2007 22:42
Will, thank you for the pointer. The data in this paper only starts in 1991, one year after the reunification. The misunderstanding seems to be that I am comparing the situation before the fall of the Wall and after, while you are looking at the development only after the fall. I claim that happiness dropped significantly /around reunification/, in spite of of an increase in real income (and, arguably, freedom).
The paper shows that life satisfaction of East Germans correlated with pay raises. It is important to keep in mind that East Germans’ incomes were mostly below the national average. For this group the correlation is intuitive.
The question is whether the correlation also holds for incomes above national average. If that is true then GDP is an adequate proxy for happiness. Otherwise, the GDP needs to be complemented with a measure of income distribution / inequality / disparity. I suspect the latter is true.
November 13th, 2007 00:01
You guys were awesome. If you were nervous you didn’t show it.
I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by the affirmative group. I think the debate would have been more instructive if the affirmative had been better prepared. Professor Sachs, who I came to see, was really off topic. They really never managed to make a strong case that any of the problems they were pointing out amounted to a failure of America at the pursuit of happiness, especially in the face of all the observable success.
It wasn’t until the debate was almost over, when the topic of poverty was brought up, that Sachs quoted some statistics that gave me pause. The by-country comparison of the percentage of people reporting that they did not have sufficient funds to purchase food did sound quite high in the U.S. compared to other industrial countries. Of the problems the affirmative pointed out, I think the issue of poverty in this country, based on those statistics he read, would have been their best bet for framing some particular problem as a failure of the whole relative to other rich countries, even if it is not something that affects the majority of Americans. It was certainly better than Stevenson’s arms race or Sachs’s displeasure with the current political situation, and that part of the debate was just getting started when the whole thing came to an end.
November 13th, 2007 10:47
[...] left/right, might suggest that similar forces were at play. And according to Wilkinson’s own account, Sachs was more interested in denouncing George W Bush than in discussing the proposition he was [...]
November 14th, 2007 06:35
Will, you might have seen that Tyler recently blogged the views of his “evil twin” Tyrone on how he would have debated in favour of the proposition that America is failing in its pursuit of happiness. If you had been asked to represent the other side of the argument, what might you have said?
May 5th, 2008 10:42
Martin, you’ve really got to the heart of the matter.