Happiness Is...Higher Taxes

Is one man's productivity another man's pollution?

Will Wilkinson from the February 2006 issue

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Layard's account of economic success as "pollution" is a striking illustration of what the philosopher John Rawls had in mind when he argued that utilitarianism fails to take seriously the separateness of persons. If it is legitimate to use the coercive arm of the state to discourage work simply because it makes other people feel bad, then our liberty to pursue our own ends, for our own reasons, is hostage to the way the brains of strangers happen to light up. The aims and beliefs that make us distinct persons are reduced to nothing, except as they count in the summing. When we are reduced to mere vessels of utility, it becomes difficult to take seriously the rich plurality of moral conviction, or to give full weight to the fact that others believe with equal intensity that theirs is the one true vision of the good. In the face of rampant philosophical diversity, utilitarians too often miss the point and ask whether pluralism is good for utility when they ought to step back and consider that others would like to rule according to their dogma too.

In response to the fact that family is of overwhelming importance for happiness, Layard blithely prescribes mandatory state-funded parenting classes. He never pauses to consider that the curriculum of a compulsory parenting class would be a battleground of clashing ideologies, or that its message might be drawn more from James Dobson than from the learned pages of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Or perhaps he is sure his side would win, which is what Dobson probably thinks too.

In a land where Mormons, Muslims, and masochists walk side by side, and none is specially positioned to certify the correct concept of value, the role of government is not to pick a philosophy and shove it down our throats. It is to provide a reasonably neutral framework that allows each of us to pursue our ends peacefully in the light of our own convictions about the good. There's a reason liberal democracies get top marks in happiness.�