Chris Dillow, of the Stumbling and Mumbling blog, argues for government policy that aims to minimise misery rather than maximise happiness. “A good reason for this is that whilst happiness is in large part an idiosyncratic thing, unhappiness is more closely correlated with social conditions, most notably unemployment.”
Saamah Abdallah at the New Economics Foundation blog comments on the ONS’s newly published statistics on subjective wellbeing. This being the second year that happiness questions are included means that it is still too early to discern any patterns or delve into the causes of these changes. “In time, this rich data source will allow policy analysts and researchers to bore down into the minutiae of well-being patterns, looking at different population groups, parts of the country and working conditions.”
(Credit: Alain Tolhurst)
Rafael Behr at The New Statesman explores that is behind his knee-jerk reaction to the Home Office’s vans that have been touring London, saying “The impact on net migration will be negligible; the ugliness of the message is palpable.”
Jonathan Portes and Angus Armstrong of the NIESR argue that the government’s Help to Buy scheme is distorting the housing market.
Ben Richardson, writing for the ToUChstone blog, looks back at the IMF’s scrutiny of George Osborne’s austerity programme and finds that what is interesting “politically is that the government and opposition completely disagreed on what this actually meant.”
