I am sure that other people will have hasd similar experiences but I will tell my travel tale anyway-
I was once with a "group" who travelled to Afghanistan and collected those shaggy sheepskin coats that were so fashionable twenty years ago. Each group member had at least two expensive cameras swinging around their neck, bouncing against their huge shaggy coat.
When we got to India I looked back at our our fat, baggy coated, camera dangling group trailing miserably across the road, passing happy groups of skinny locals who were living and cooking their meals on the median strip that ran between the traffic. I wondered why we, who had so much, all looked so unhappy, and why the local people seemed to be so much happier despite the fact that they seemed to be living their lives entirely on a median strip.
Some years later I was again travelling in India and almost everything I had was stolen on a train. To my surprise I had a wonderful feeling of freedom. There was nothing to worry about because everything had been taken away.
Is our "stuff" making us unhappy? Are we wasting our lives working in miserable jobs to earn the money to buy "stuff" that is a burden to us?
http:/www.badapplebullies.com/

If prosperity doesn't or hasn't made you happy I don't know what to say to you. But, I warn you. There are many only too willing to strip you of any such happiness and then charge a tax in support of their favorite culture. You don't mind being excluded do you? Apparently not.

You would have loved that wooly coat in northern India in the winter - and you could have sold the cameras for food.

These arguments about 'are we happier now' are interesting but ultimately tendentious and lacking empiricism. The Australia Institute and Hamilton in particular publishes some very interesting research based almost entirely on qualititative methodology.

One of the problems of qualitative research in measuring 'happiness' is that no one knows what happiness is. We're more likely to know or feel what it isn't. Quantitative research doesn't even try to go down that path. It can't. My happiness may be someone else's misery.

One fact we can assert, unless you're off with the looney Greens and want to go back to a high tariff/high taxing regime, is that floating the $ and opening our markets up to foreign competition has given a whole generation the opportunity to buy a house and goods which they never could have afforded 30 years ago. The trade off is they're hocked up to their eye balls.

If we had 15 percent unemployment and 10 percent inflation we'd also be hocked up to the eyeballs and in deep, deep trouble.

There's a quasi-spiritialism that attends many of the arguments propounded by the writer which excites the ferals and guarantees some barking mad commentary.

Happiness is relative, a person is happy in Australia, if they have a plasma TV and pay TV. A person in Africa is happy, if they have food on table.

People in Australia are unhappy because the Jones next door have more than them (they only have a flat screen TV), so people strive to work hard so that they reach at least the average Australian level (plasma), or for some people, they will want to be at the elite level (private cinema).

However for every person that go up the wealth chain, there are people who replace them in the bottom 10/20/30% of the wealth chain, these people become the new unhappy people.

So there will always be people who are unhappy, even if everyone has a private cinema, the people who have the smallest private cinema become the new unhappy people.

So no matter what there will always be unhappy people, who are below an imaginary line (plasma TV), but that does not mean our life had not improve (plasma is better than flat screen) and we will never stop people being ambitious, everyone will always try to improve their lot in life, it is only human nature, that is why human race advances.

So prosperity is good for every Australian, the problem is that some people just does not appreciate it, the imaginary line is now at Plasma TV, much better than in 1992, when it was at “ people being able to keep roof on their head, when unemployment is 17% and interest rate at 15%”

The idea that happiness is utterly subjective and therefore cannot be measured keeps us in the dark ages with respect to valuing the things we don't trade.

Count the smiles on people's faces as you walk down the street: a simple numerical indicator of the happiness of the community. Sure, the methodology could be improved but there is plenty of reason not to dismiss the idea of happiness as a thing to be treasured and measured in numerical terms, just as we take note of the birthrate and the economy.

Here are two facts for you: happiness is *often* measured empirically, though it isn't standardised; and there's an observed correlation between happiness and economic parity within a community. Having nothing doesn't make you happy, but having about the same as your neighbours means you're more likely to be contented than if you feel they have what you're entitled to, or vice versa.

Drawing a line from valuing happiness to high tarriffs and 'ferals' is absurd. You don't have to be Amish to be happy, but it might occasionally help to take a leaf from their book and raise the odd barn together :-)

According to Nationmaster.com Australia rates 5th in the “happiness” stakes behind Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark (strange clustering of Scandanavians)

In the ‘life satisfaction” ratings from the same site, we run 14th on a table in which Switzerland tops the ratings.

I am not sure what distinguishes happiness from life satisfaction, although I would have thought “happiness” is a fleeting experience and “life satisfaction” a more “reflective” value.

I did do a comparison between life satisfaction and national taxation levels (as % of GDP) and found a strong negative correlation between the two (more the general tax level and government control of discretionary income, the lower the life satisfaction), which suggests that the whole socialist mantra of a the merits of social services and co-dependency within society is rubbish (at least of you want to feel you are enjoying a “satisfied” life).

For myself, “life satisfaction” is best experienced by having and exercising the right of self determination, personal choice and recognizing achievement through our own effort.

The outcome of a satisfying experience may not actually make us “happy” but as I said before, “happiness” is fleeting and far less substantial on the scale of what really matters.