NDLI: Impact of Size and Quality of Governments on Happiness: Financial Insecurity as a Key-Problem in Market-Democracies

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Ott, Jan
Copyright Year	2014
Abstract	If I agree to do a job for a friend for $100, my friend and I would get very upset if someone else would put his hands on our shoulders, telling us that he wants a 20 % Value Added Tax and 25 % Income Tax of the remaining $80, $40 altogether. Perhaps we would cool down a bit if he would be a nice guy and if he would tell us some reasonable story about all the good things he wants to do with our money. But we would still be rather upset and critical. Benjamin Radcliff however, argues that there is a positive relation between the size of governments, as expressed in expenditures and taxation, and average happiness in nations. His conclusion is counterintuitive but nevertheless convincing, in particular by his excellent statistical analysis of available data. His argument would have been even more convincing, if he would have focused a bit more on his key-problem: poverty and financial insecurity in free-market societies. This problem can be solved by a gradual introduction of a basic income, in combination with more political attention for the distribution of labour in society. Work has to be done by somebody! He also should have paid more attention to the quality of governments as a necessary condition for his argument, and he should have acknowledged that even a small government can be very effective. Big government is neither required nor sufficient for happiness! In this article Radcliff’s argument will be summarized first, followed by some critical comments.
Starting Page	1639
Ending Page	1647
Page Count	9
File Format	PDF
ISSN	13894978
Journal	Journal of Happiness Studies
Volume Number	16
Issue Number	6
e-ISSN	15737780
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-09-23
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Happiness Labour unions Quality of governments Size of governments Tri- and bipartite consultations between governments Employers and labour unions Quality of Life Research Personality and Social Psychology Economics Philosophy Positive Psychology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Social Sciences

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
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