Economics of Happiness

There is an interesting post on the economics of happiness over at Max Speak, You Listen! Here's a snippet, but the whole thing is worth a look.

When someone in a neighborhood builds a McMansion, the utility (happiness) of most other people in the neighborhood declines.

Frank proposes taxes on luxury consumption, but clearly the deeper problem is simply the rising inequalities of wealth and income in the US (and in most other countries also). That the Nordic countries are all ahead of the US in measured happiness is simply not at all surprising in light of all this, given their far greater egalitarianism, which has been preserved.