Why are economists so eager to measure contentment?

Washington Post,Sunday, January 3, 2010:
Outlook Section,page B1,B5: "HAPPY TALK" by Carol Graham, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and author of "Happiness Around the World",a forthcoming book. My comments are included in my blog below.

"Economic crisis.Job losses. Wars. Yet, while we can quantify things such as GDP,it is harder to measure their impact on our collective happiness: The economies of happiness - a set of new techniques and data to measure well-being and contentment.

How much happiness does money really buy? Does Happiness Pay? Recently, the Sarkozy Commission-led by Nobel Prize-winning economists issued a world-wide call for the development of broader measures of national well-being. The Kingdom of Bhutan uses "gross national happiness" as its preferred measure of progress. The British study stresses how to track well-being, using happiness as a base. In USA,Center for Disease Control measures of well-being into national health statistics.

It has been an amazing foray(or raid) into the complexity of the human psyche and the simplicity of what makes us happy" Here I would reiterate my New Year's Resolution of 4S-2D=RCA. Acronyms are stated:

1. Simplicity
2. Sincerity
3. Serenity
4. Serendipity
minus 1. Discouragement
2. Depression
= R-Rejoicing
C-Compassion
A-Amity
gaining happiness in the heart and mind.

Such philosophical underpinning cannot be quantified by numbers in the data but by the inner thought of perception and reception of the mind.

President Obama said that all Americans deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness with their own version or own measure of whatever makes them happy.

We all want happiness and more of it. But this is a nascent science(emerginig inexact science as economics) Should happiness by a goal in life? I believe so with the in-depth understanding of epistemology. In sum, I would state categorically that
the ultimate success in economics is the contribution to be made for human happiness. My modest contribution would be my works listed at the Library of Congress: www.loc.gov under Shieh, Francis for your kind reference.

Let me reiterate the Equation of Happiness from my past blogs:

Happiness is not material consumption over desire only but to add intellectual pursuit,spiritual satisfaction plus good health as the Numerator over the desire as the Denominator.

Francis Shieh aka Xie Shihao,an octogenarian student of economics and philosophy with my avid studies of Confucianism from the original Chinese sources to be compared with Aristotle and Plato in English.I have reason to believe that human nature is still the same as homosapiens regardless of the cultures from the West and the East. The world is one in the name of globalization in the 21st century.

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 10.08 a.m.