Question on happiness

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

I'm 99% sure Doug's comments are right on target. It would be
interesting to know
the questionnaire protocol, and just how superficial it is. I would
anticipate
that if we analyzed the questions, and then tried them out on focus
groups, we
would find that their form and content would tend to arouse an anxiety
that
participants would almost immediately defend against by asserting that
they were
"happy," mostly because the question would tend to suggest that their
position in
the society, if they let themselves think objectively about it, is
really shitty,
for the reasons Doug factually lays out. Many people are aware, without
knowing
the complete data, that they are economically struggling and insecure.
However,
their position is
so subordinate and powerless that acknowledging it would be unbearably
depressing. Since American exceptionalism means that there is no great
tradition
of a collective response to this in the US -- i.e. no history of class
politics,
class parties over and above the individual -- the usual response is
what
Samuelson documents: cynicism, mindless defensive optimism.

Notice that those who are most objective about social reality in the US
are
people whose subordination and oppression has a clear-cut, socially
recognized
basis. Most of all this includes the targets of racism. I suspect that
the reason
why people of color tend to be more politically progressive than
Euro-americans
of similarly deprived economic position is that there is a way of
understanding
their situation that is comprehensible in the dominant culture's terms.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Jacob Segal wrote:
>
> >Forwarded article from Robert Samuelson in this week's Newsweek.  He refers
> >to a study on the "happiness" of people in the US versus Europe.  My
> >question is what do people think about the validity of self-reporting on
> >happiness, given the being unhappy is something of a mark of shame for many
> >people in this culture.
>
> Pollsters say answers to "global" questions are extremely unreliable.
> And answers to one as loaded as this one - it's un-American to be
> unhappy! - has to be extremely unreliable.
>
> >  By and large, Americans see the United States as a more "mobile
> >society than Europe," write Alberto Alesina and Rafael Di Tella from Harvard
> >and Robert MacCulloch from the LSE. Americans think they "have more
> >opportunities to move up (or down)" than Europeans, who are more fatalistic
> >about their place on the economic ladder.
>
> Yeah, they think that but it isn't true. American society is no more
> mobile than European societies.
>
> >The United States is a middle-class nation, and most Americans want
> >it to stay that way.
>
> Another untruth. Measured in income terms, the U.S. has a smaller
> "middle class" (hi Carrol!) than any other First World country. All
> those bad redistributionist social democracies have much larger
> middle income brackets than the Land of the Free.
>
> >  No one wants a society starkly split into "haves" and
> >"have-nots." The obsession with "rising inequality" plays to these fears
> >without addressing them. It is mostly a moral self-indulgence: a way of
> >demonstrating superior "caring."
>
> I hope there's a special circle of hell for people who make arguments
> this spurious.
>
> >  It implies that the rich are somehow
> >responsible for the plight of the poor
>
> Heavens! Not that!!
>
> Doug