Balneus “ weak proxy.”

"weak proxy", maybe but

I challenge you to produce a better one, something “stronger”.


“The ideal indicator for success of a state, or a system of organizing a society, is as direct as possible, or else we are merely looking at the flickering shadows on the wall of Plato's cave to assess the weather.”


Rather than elude to some mysterious and obscure measure, I challenge you to produce your (any) results, so we can all objectively analyse them and assess their comparative merits.



Because, whilst you seem to be feel you are entitled to criticize my simple correlation, drawn from auditable data, you have not presented any alternative, other than theoretical mumbo-jumbo and weasel words.


Re “The ideal indicators can be gathered from any society” …..


So, gather them and justify / argue them properly and rely on their validity to carry them through the rigor of objective analysis.


”so population psychological metrics are the only valid subject for comparison of societies and systems.”


I challenge you to actually justify WHY “population psychological metrics “ are the only valid subject for comparison of societies and systems.


“Note too, that different societies and groups might be pleased or distressed by different things. Measuring psychological distress directly takes this reality into account, even when aggregating across groups.”


Every statistic would be ignored on the basis “that different societies and groups might be pleased or distressed by different things.” (called Standard Deviations)


At the end of the day, statistics, like politics, is about the possible.


In essence, we have a collection of blunt instruments to fashion and measure social circumstance, yet you are expecting the fine tools of a electronic micro-surgeon, which we still wait to be invented, to be applied.

I suggest my presentation represent the possible and your expectation is based in the realm of the fanciful or impossible.


I will be happy to listen when you present something of merit, based on data, analysis and reasoned constructs.

But until you can present something “better” than my simple “Tax% : life satisfaction” correlation,

my view remains, uncontested.

In response to: Col Rouge, Saturday, 5 December 2009 10:29:55 AM

It should take only a moment's thought to see your idea of tax as a close proxy for human happiness as irrelevant, rather than correct or incorrect, because if you hold tax levels constant at whatever level you like (including zero), unless political structures and policies make no difference to human happiness or misery, you should still be assessing the outcomes of political decisions and administrative competence as a guide to assessing whether a change in direction is necessary or not.

And yes, there are numerous large studies that used rather long questionnaires (I think one across Latin America done by either the IMF or World Bank a few years back was one, but I cannot lay my hands on the reference) to assess human happiness across a range of political and economic systems, and with different levels of affluence. These demonstrated that the human basics (food, shelter, health services and education) were much better a determinant of life satisfaction than individual or national financial status.

Balneus “It should take only a moment's thought to see your idea of tax as a close proxy for human happiness as irrelevant, rather than correct or incorrect,”

I assume that’s your personal, humble, opinion?

I have no delusions to the matter that tax is never the sole arbiter of life satisfaction but there remains a negative correlation between the two and I would hypothesise, from it that:

The sort of social systems which rely on high tax produce the sort of social environment which is dpressing.

Now the sort of social systems which rely on high tax levels are socialist and as we saw with the iron curtain and we see with the lot of North Koreans, socialist systems need wall and fences to keep their populations imprisoned (and likely depressed).

“, but I cannot lay my hands on the reference”

Of course you cannot… so I will just treat your entire claim as an “irrelevance”.

“These demonstrated that the human basics (food, shelter, health services and education) were much better a determinant of life satisfaction than individual or national financial status.”

Well that was assertion is “founded” on your absent data and as such is “irrelevant”

However, since you seem so impressed with psychology, Maslow had a few ideas about “human basics, food, shelter…”

May I (humbly) suggest you read him.

I know I have and I still feel the relationship between tax % : Life satisfaction is relevant because

Being denied the basics of life… food shelter, one might well be


“Hungry and depressed “


Tax %, as a guide to government style (libertarian being low and socialist being high), indicates the removal of those life qualities which exist ABOVE the lowest level on Maslow’s hierarchical needs.


Feed the body but remove the opportunity for self actualisation and you end up


“Well fed and still depressed”


I suggest you come back when you have some “basic data”


The problem with most psychologists (wanna-bes included) is they think, in their hubris, they are the only cognitive humans on the planet who are entitled to express an opinion.

Balneus,

You were the one that brought up the statistics used for epidemiological studies.

I still remain to be convinced that any study group's figures on depression related to government can be winnowed out from the myriad of other causes.

If you are talking of a general "happiness" index, even then, the relevance to the government of the day and existing policies is extremely tenuous.

"Shadow Minister" Monday, 7 December 2009 8:28:17 AM) is worried about causes: again, causes don't matter - because the total metric for the population reflects management of causes external to the person, and the degree of care available to ameliorate intrinsic causes.

"Col Rouge", (Monday, 7 December 2009 7:18:34 AM) was harsh about the lack of data, so is obviously unaware of the heavy attention this has received from economists in recent times. The Xmas 2006 bumper edition of "The Economist" had a whole swathe of articles on this.

I suggest a quick perusal of "Quality of Life indicators" from the Economist Intelligence Unit (such as http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITYofLIFE.pdf which is not yet hidden behind the new paywall), and particularly http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ which is used by both The Economist and the OECD (downloadable datasets available). What is especially noteworthy is the difference in ranking between per cap GDP and QoL indicators: the US QoL is significantly lower than per cap GDP, which the more socialist Nordic Nanny States rank higher for QoL than their GDP would suggest.

However, the World Values Survey requires a fair bit of collection work - the screening indicators for depression are not, and are therefore reasonable to collect by the ABS on a quarterly basis.

As to Maslow (again Col Rouge's comments): no problem with Maslow from me (although when studying I was a little more of a fan of his fellow-traveller Rogers). But, of course, the shelter/food/health bits need to be covered first... hard to self-actualize without them!