John Hood writes about government and its role in happiness

RALEIGH – Is it the government’s job to make you happy? While this may seem like a simple question, there are some important subtleties hidden in these few words.

At first glance, “no” seems like the obvious answer. The Declaration of Independence states that governments were established to protect our rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The first part of our state constitution uses the same language, while adding that North Carolinians have the right to protect their right “to enjoy the fruits of their own labor.”

In our form of government you have no right to happiness. You also have no right to profit from someone else’s work. You can desire, strive and strive. You can achieve your goals and feel happy about it. Or you may not fully achieve your goals, but you will find satisfaction in the attempt and what you gain along the way.

Governments therefore only have an obligation to protect your right to pursue happiness. Just being unhappy doesn’t justify governments using coercion to transfer the fruits of other people’s labor to you.

On the other hand, the tasks that governments are constitutionally authorized to do for us – ensuring public safety, administering the courts, and financing public goods that cannot otherwise be provided voluntarily – are obviously related to our happiness. We pay taxes, obey the law, and otherwise give up some of our personal freedom to receive valuable public services. If we don’t get them or their value is much lower than the cost, it understandably makes us unhappy. As government failures mount, misery turns to anger.

Whether they live in Washington or Raleigh, policymakers typically evaluate public policies according to objective criteria such as economic growth rates, changes in personal income, educational attainment, and health outcomes. Increasingly, however, some analysts are using measures of public happiness or satisfaction to assess what the government is doing (or not doing).

The technical name for what they’re measuring is “subjective well-being.” People differ in preferences, circumstances, and definitions of a good life. The best way to gauge how happy or satisfied they are is to ask them, rather than guessing based on facts external to their personal experiences.

Progressives and conservatives clearly disagree when it comes to the optimal size and scope of government. In the North Carolina context, for example, progressives believe that our state’s spending and taxes are too low to fund necessary public services. Conservatives believe that North Carolina is closer to solving the problem and that expanding state government beyond its current size will cost more than the additional services are worth.

I am a conservative and often cite economic growth research to support my thesis. But is that really the goal? One could argue that instead of measuring North Carolina’s gross domestic product, we should measure North Carolina’s gross domestic happiness!

Several researchers have conducted this type of analysis. For example, a study by Baylor University political scientist Patrick Flavin, published in the journal Social Science Research, compared the level of government spending with the level of subjective well-being. He found no relationship between overall government spending and residents’ sense of happiness. He found the same for major categories of government spending, such as education and public aid.

But Flavin found that states that spend more on true “public goods”—including highways, public safety, libraries, and parks—have higher levels of subjective well-being. In the case of true public goods, it is either impossible or prohibitively expensive to exclude non-payers from using them, and consumption by one person does not significantly reduce another person’s ability to use them.

Combined with other research showing a link between economic freedom and subjective well-being, I find this evidence to be broadly consistent with a fiscally conservative approach to public policy. Perhaps you disagree. I’d love to talk more about this.

John Hood is a board member of the John Locke Foundation. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).