Civitas Blog

At a so-called Google Zeitgeist Europe Conference last Monday -- even this choice of venue spoke volumes about the new softer brand-image of the party he is busy cultivating, Mr Cameron delivered a speech in which he described improving society’s sense of well-being as ‘ the central political challenge of our times’.

Increasing the nation’s wealth is apparently no longer his party’s sole or even main domestic priority.

‘It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money… Well-being …[is] about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships’, he said.

Of course, all this is true. The art of wise government, as it is of practical wisdom at the individual level, is knowing how to achieve and reconcile with each other these often conflicting ends. Few would claim wealth is of much or any value apart from as a means to achieve these other objectives. Contrary to popular belief, there are not too many Scrooges in real-life.

However, it has not taken long for some of our more left-leaning pundits to seize on Cameron’s speech as a cue to engage in their favourite activity of anti-capitalist America bashing.

In today’s Times, doubtless still refreshed from her nine-month time-out adventure cruise complete with her husband and two daughters, Mary Ann Sieghart claims in a column entitled 'All work and high pay makes Jack unhealthy' that there are ‘plenty of relatively high-earning professionals who … probably underestimate the effect on their health and happiness of factors other than money, such as good relationships and time off work’.

In support of her assertion, she cites the results of a recently published comparative study of disease rates among Americans and British that found the former in much worse physical shape than the latter, despite their greater affluence and their spending more on health care in particular.

Ms Sieghart ascribes the inferior health of our American cousins to their having to work harder and longer than us.
She writes:

‘Compared with other Europeans, we British see ourselves as working long hours and suffering job security. But compared with the lives of Americans, ours are a doodle. Yes, the average Italian gets 42 days of paid holiday a year to our 28. But Americans take only 14 of the 16 days to which they are entitled. No wonder they are frazzled and their blood pressure shoots up. No wonder, also, that they are no happier than we are, despite their greater wealth.’

It is difficult to know on what basis Ms Sieghart makes her claim that Americans are no happier than us. According to a report by Mark Easton BBC News Home Editor posted earlier this month http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4771908.stmon the BBC News Online website, the UK comes lower down the world rankings for happiness than the USA.

What appears to have misled Ms Sieghart into wrongly thinking the Americans to be no happier than us despite their greater affluence is supposedly that, during the last fifty years, happiness levels have not risen among either them or us despite both sets of people having become richer.

Presumably, her reasoning went: if neither populace has become happier despite both becoming richer, then their happiness level cannot be a function of their affluence, in which case the Americans cannot be happier than us, despite their being richer. This, however, is a fallacious piece of reasoning.

Moreover, if, as Ms Sieghart falsely claims, it is because American work longer and harder than us that accounts for why, despite that making them richer than us, they are no happier than us -- which claim is false because they are happier, how come the French, Italians and Germans are all uniformly less happy than us, despite their enjoying more generous paid leave and shorter working hours than we do? According to economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald in a paper published in 2000 entitled 'Is the UK Moving Up the International Wellbeing Rankings?', life-satisfaction surveys carried out in nine European countries since 1973 have found France, Germany and Italy occupying the bottom three rankings during this period, with the UK hovering around the middle during this same time.

I suppose one cannot blame Ms Sieghart for her sloppy journalism.

Being the mother of two young girls, she clearly has far more important things to do with her time than devote herself to her work. Still, given how sloppy her journalism appears to be, perhaps, she as well as her readers would be better off were she to decide to make mothering her full-time commitment. Truth, rather than misinformation, is a social desideratum too and that does require time and effort.