Dalrymple writes in the Express about the results of a study commissioned by Prime Minister Cameron:
The survey found that the richest people tend to be the happiest, the least anxious and most fulfilled in their lives; poor people the least happy, the most anxious and least fulfilled in their lives.
He discusses some interesting caveats and corollaries to this finding, including for example, the effect that meritocracy has on one’s contentment. But he returns to the PM:
…this is bad news for Mr Cameron who commissioned the survey for he will no longer be able to argue (if the economy does not improve), that it does not really matter because increased wealth does not make people happier anyway.In trying to find a non-economic means of measuring our wellbeing he was almost certainly trying to excuse himself in advance for any possible failure in the economic field.It is extremely unlikely that this would wash with the public – and the public would be right.
I don’t particularly like the term social mobility… I guess a person, looking on, might be forgiven for thinking I was not a little socially mobile, as it were, just last week; but I don’t really think that even begins to capture what was taking place, in fact, I’d think it a rather unfortunate reckoning with the connotation of the vulgar mind that that term evokes, at least for me.
He he… yes I’m being a bit pompous and annoyingly vague – I won’t divulge the details except to say there is no correlation in financial terms, just the gratification of an exchange in the currency of culture and civility.
I’ve read most of Jane Austen and so far my favourite is Persuasion, that has some very interesting insight into the nature of ‘social mobility’. More particularly, on the subject of happiness, “So long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters”
Yes, well, you wouldn’t describe Anne Eliot, for perhaps the greater part of her youth, as being happy but she was admired, respected… she had self respect and in the end, well, she was very happy and I think we should be very happy for her.
This http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/24/mitt-romney-self-creation-myth
may be of interest.