Government Can't Make Us Happy By John Stossel

Government Can't Make Us Happy

By John Stossel

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn't think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive.

Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the right to pursue happiness has been perverted into a government-backed entitlement to happiness.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says, "There's more to life than money. ... It's time we focus not just on GDP, but GWB -- general well-being."

Well-being sounds good. But is that something that government programs promote?

Philip Booth, an economist with London's Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of "... And the Pursuit of Happiness," says no. I spoke recently with Booth and economist Christopher Coyne of George Mason University, who contributed to that volume.

Since the country of Bhutan got all kinds of publicity by using a measure it calls "gross national happiness" instead of gross national product, and The New York Times says it's a "new measure of well-being from a happy little kingdom," I asked them if there is anything to it.

"It's not a model that most Western societies would want to copy," Booth said.

I didn't think so. In Bhutan, people can get locked up for criticizing the government. Yet one study ranked the United States 23rd in the list of happy places. Bhutan was higher on the list.

That's nonsense, said Coyne. It makes more sense to judge a country's ability to make its citizens happy by whether foreigners want to move there. Clearly, more people want to move to America than to Bhutan. "The way to think about this," Coyne said, "is the fact that so many people want to come to the United States indicates that they at least perceive there is the opportunity to pursue what makes them happy."

What does make people happy? People fantasize about leisure and luxury, but the best data show that such things don't create lasting happiness. What does make for happiness is obtaining work that allows you to move toward goals that you find meaningful. In other words, what's important is not just employment, but purposeful work. So is having control over your workplace. Chrysler found that if workers have more control on the assembly line, they are happier. The freedom to decide your own goals is crucial.

Other things that make people happy are religion, having family and friends you care about, giving to others (face to face or via charity) and money.

Actually, money makes you happier if you're miserably poor. But once you have a certain amount -- maybe enough that you no longer have to worry about your family's well-being -- more money doesn't make much difference. Lottery winners report that, a year after their windfall, they were no happier than they were before.

That's counter-intuitive. Instinct tells us that wealth brings happiness. It's a reason why some people envy the rich and why income inequality causes lots of angst today. One left-wing journalist writes, "Every model shows the most unequal societies are the least happy."

"There's no evidence that this is true," Coyne said. "Even the staunchest proponents of government intervention to increase happiness admit that there's no relationship."

You wouldn't know that reading The New York Times.

The mainstream media claim that the way to make people happy is to have government protect them from misfortune and give them stuff. The research doesn't bear that out, says Booth.

"In fact, the bigger government is, the less happy societies tend to be. There is a direct relationship, stripping everything else out, between the government allowing people more freedom and well-being increasing."

Yet politicians move in the other direction. The socialist likely to be France's next president wants to lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 and institute a "maximum-work" law.

When will they learn that you don't make people happier by taking their options away?

Mas y Mas- Kinky

We've Figured Him Out - Ben Stein

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?

Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:

The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.

They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.

They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student. They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.

The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.

Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.

The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.

Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.

The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.

These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to "protect us" from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.

Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.

There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator.

A Quiet Man

Standing on the brige of a German Sub captured by Commander Irvine's battle group.


A Quiet Man

My father was a quiet man.
He didn't speak of his adventures, he didn't brag of his triumphs.
My father was a graduate of the Naval Academy.
The Naval Academy at that time was one of the most difficult of schools to get into. It is by invitation only, only the best of the best. It was by congressional appointment to the sons of the best and brightest our country had to offer.
My grandfather was instrumental in the cure for syphilis during world war one.
Back then; it killed almost as men as the Germans. Therefore earning the placement for my father to attend the Naval Academy to pursue a engineering degree.

Now, after graduation my father was denied his commission as an officer because he wore glasses and at that time before our entrance to the war the armed forces could still be kind of picky who they wanted commanding their ships.
When my father was called to active duty, he was 24. he was to fight in World War II, as the commander of a destroyer in the north Atlantic.

The German submarines at that point had decimated allied shipping, navies and ruled the seas.
There was no radar, there was no sonar, and you knew a submarine was around when its first torpedo hit you or your colleague.
My father watched as ship after ship went down around him. He rescued all the men he could but he watched many others die; the surviving ships often turned and headed home, battered and beaten.

My father, his best friend, and a group of other ship captains came up with the combat convoy formation they still use today. One that would offer some protection to some of the ships and they went out yet again, to avenge with murderous intent.
The war was starting to turn by then, but the German navy still dominated the seas.
The Nazis decided to launch a huge winter offensive; they were counting on the weather, Mother Nature to assist them.
They were relying on weather reports from a submarine in the north Atlantic to launch and to facilitate their attack and victory.
Equipped with their new combat formation and our newest technology, a most basic radar and sonar my father detected the nazi sub.
For three days they hunted the sub, playing cat and mouse or "search and attack" off the coastline of Europe, then a sister ship reestablished contact with the new underwater sound equipment.
Commander James M. Irvine directed his ship into the field of fire and launched his depth charge attacks. The sinking of this sub was a key part in our victory in "The battle of the bulge", contributing materially to sealing our victory in WW2,
My father was awarded the Legion of Merit with the combat V, the third highest award of our navy.
The war for him was not over yet, on his last mission, he forced the surrender of another nazi sub, and escorted it back where it is on display in the Chicago museum of science and industry.
Dad never told me these stories, like a said he was a quiet man. I caught up with a young (back in WW2) man who had served under my father, he was kind enough to give me the picture above

My dad died July 4th weekend in 1988,
My son was 9 months old, and my father never saw his only grandson.
I was a different man back then. My ego, my pride, the anger of a young man had driven a wedge between my dad and I.
So we had not spoken for a while, July 4th weekend meant I was working. July 4th weekend meant nothing to me, except work and everybody complaining we had to work on a holiday. I liked the fireworks and the parties even though I worked through most of that too. But I never thought about the true sacrifice for freedom, his sacrifice for freedom, the ultimate sacrifice thousands have given.
My mother gave a call that weekend to let us know my father had died.
Mom gave me his medals, the letter from the President and Secretary of the Navy for his legion of merit, and the navies "action report".

As the years have passed I have grown, I have come to better understand my quiet father by reading those letters of award, by gazing at his medals, and the memories of a quiet man who sacrificed along with the tens of thousands before and since. The tens of thousands who paid the ultimate price for our freedom that I so carelessly enjoy.

The fourth of July is a day of parades, fireworks and celebration in the United States.
Someone in your family, or the family of someone you know are grieving for every freedom we enjoy.

Please share a moment of remembrance for the cost of our freedom.

Slow Motion Rider

Hero: Gy Sgt. Ralph Scott

Ralph Scott

Like hail during a thunderstorm, the bullets landed all around the Marine as he simultaneously fired two M-16 service rifles, one in each arm. Staff Sgt Ralph Scott was using his own weapon and the weapon of his platoon sergeant, who was busy carrying another wounded Marine on his back to safety. Both rifles continuously erupted as he methodically emptied magazine after magazine into the insurgent position.

It was November 12, 2004, and Scott was in the middle of his seventh deployment. He was the platoon commander for the 1st Platoon Company C, Battalion Landing Team 1/3.

On this particular day, Marines Sgt Jack Foster and LCpl Robert Carter were pinned down in an open field in Fallujah, Iraq, with no cover. Foster had gone to get Carter, who had been hit in the arm and was severely wounded.

Soon Foster ran out of bullets. That’s when Scott, along with his platoon sergeant Sgt Michael Chambers and Cpl Jason Bennett ran into the open field to retrieve them.

“Bennett and I stood up in the field to draw the enemy fire to give the others a chance to run for a covered position into of a school house full of Iraqi Army soldiers,” Scott said. “In order to help Chambers lighten his load, I took his rifle and used it with mine. That is how I came to have two rifles to fire at the enemy.”

It was later called a miracle that any of them survived, especially considering that two rocket-propelled grenades had also been fired upon them, the shrapnel going every which way but inexplicably missing their flesh.

“Anybody from that platoon, seeing what he did,” started Chambers, “My words can’t do him justice.”

Scott, who has served in the Marine Corps since enlisting at age 17 in 1989, earned a Bronze Star Medal with Valor for his actions that day and other combat he saw between November and December of 2004.

He is a man with an unyielding sense of duty toward his fellow Marines, according to Chambers.

“When Staff Sergeant Scott first came to us in Charlie Company, all he said to us was, ‘My whole entire job — I don’t care if it takes my life — is to bring you all home,’” said Chambers. “I’m here to tell you that he stood behind his word.”

“All I can say is you won’t meet another man like him,” Chambers said. “Every battle we were in, while Marines would naturally and instinctively hit the deck when the first barrage would hit, Staff Sergeant Scott would be there standing, already simultaneously returning fire. We would follow his lead. There’s no finer man, no fiercer warrior that the Marines have ever sent into battle than that man. I would go back to combat with him in a second.”

“In my heart, I’m still with Charlie Company,” said Scott. “Whatever job the Marine Corps gives me, I will do it to the best of my ability, but I’d be lying if I said I’d rather be here than back with the grunts.”

“I wake up every morning, and I come to work,” said Scott. “Whether work happens to be behind a desk in Hawaii or on a battlefield in Iraq isn’t really the point. The point is to do your best and give your best effort at all times and in all situations.”