Well, this part of the article made me MORE THAN A LITTLE nervous........
"What we've learned is that the
real quality of life for all of us now depends on improving the social environment, and that we have a policy handle on how to do that. It's not that we all need to have more therapy to try and make us nicer people.
INCOME DISTRIBUTION 
, an issue government or big corporations can do something about, really affects the psychosocial well-being of the whole society. But we can't just rely just on taxes and benefits to increase equality—the next government can undo them all at a stroke.
We've got to get this structure of equality much more deeply embedded in our society. 
I think that means more economic democracy, or workplace democracy, of every kind. We're talking about friendly societies,
mutual societies, employee ownership, employee representatives on the board,
cooperatives—ways in which business is subjected to democratic influence. The
bonus culture was only possible because the people at the top are not answerable to the employees at all." (Page 3 of article)
---------------------
An excellent book on the topic of happiness is, 'Happiness is a serious problem' by Dennis Prager.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." JOHN ADAMS
It may do us well to 'get some religion', or at least regard it again, instead of stamping it out everyplace we see it, ie, The 10 Commandments, In God We Trust, One Nation Under God, etc.... then, 'government', and I believe less inequality and more happiness, may come from the inside (of people) instead of needing more government or laws on the outside of people; and I'd rather govern from the inside - our character.
Religious and moral people (by in large) tend to trust more, commit less crime, feel less victimized, be more generous, etc -- indicators the author sites as evidence of unhappy societies. I would challenge the author to compare USA today to USA 'back when' and see if he sees similar stats. For example, the (first) Great Depression did not see widespread crime. Why not?
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.....
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Income distribution
