To: Lane3 who wrote (7350 ) 12/19/2005 6:06:44 PM From: TimF Respond to "But while to a liberal that implies that we should take some of that money that isn't producing any happiness and give it to others, to a conservative this points up the essential futility of income redistribution. Since you will be redistributing the money without redistributing the status, you'll produce no net gain in happiness. The average welfare mother in America has better health care, entertainment, food, shelter* and clothes at her disposal than the Rockefellers did at the turn of the last century."privatejetcharters.com . Robert Frank (and Mark Kleiman's post) implies that there are certain activities and professions that are more worthwhile than others, and that we should design the economy in order to push more people into those things. But this presumes that Mr Frank (or any technocratic planner) has the ability to correctly identify the right activities. I am deeply sceptical of this--and I am certainly not going to hand that sort of power over to anyone based on studies who data comes from self-reported surveys, a notoriously unreliable data source.
