A measure of happiness

Celebrated inventor Grant Ryan has come up with a way to gauge how well we’re doing that takes GDP off the chart.

- SALLY BLUNDELL

Half a century ago, John Clarke pinioned our unflappable self-assurance in Fred Dagg’s cheery refrain, We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are. It was funny, singalongable and, as always with the master satirist, honed to a razorsharp precision.

Nearly 50 years later, the refrain has changed. We have become a nation of doom merchants and worrywarts. Our houses are generally warmer and dryer; we live longer than our parents; we have better food choices and travel options; access to information is off the charts – but still we tell ourselves life is far worse than it was the day Fred Dagg kicked off his gumboots and left for Australia in 1977.

We are not alone. In a 2015 survey, 70% of Britons agreed with the statement that “things are worse than they used to be”, even though at the time they were richer, healthier and longer-living than ever. And a Pew Research survey of 38 countries in 2017 found lots of people in the “middle billion” – those living in relatively rich democratic countries not including the top and bottom 10% of income earners – thought things were worse than 50 years ago.

With climate change and unaffordable housing looming large in the lives of millennials, many believe they are worse off than the generation before them. But the gloomy view of many conventional economic models, writes Banks Peninsula tech developer and inventor Grant Ryan, “is brutally inappropriate”, and possibly causing us to focus on the wrong problems.