It is said that no two people can define “happiness” in the same way, yet we ALL know what misery is!
Allow me to introduce you to Arthur Okun. He was an American economist (one of a breed who I have little faith in, if you read my blog from a couple of weeks ago). However, Professor Okun devised what I believe is an excellent method of defining the level of “misery” within a society. Whilst all the global “brains” are busy trying to identify where we are and where we need to go, spare a few moments to think about a quite simplistic but artistic process of capturing the “as it is now”. He called it the “discomfort index” but it has since become known as the “Misery Index”
A word of caution: some economists suggest that the components of the Misery Index drive the crime rate to a degree. Using data from 1960 to 2005, they have found that the Misery Index and the crime rate correlate strongly and that the Misery Index seems to lead the crime rate by a year or so.
But it is “artistic” and it is simple; it consists of two values: first the unemployment rate as a percentage of the population; second the current rate of inflation. Thus, the heading refers to the Misery Index in Spain as I write, although for people under the age of 25 it rises to over 54%. To put this figure into context, the current figure for UK would be 11%, USA 11.2% and Croatia 21%.
What can we learn from this? I think each of us know “on our skin” what these figures mean; what is more important (indeed vital) is the question “what do world leaders intend to do in order to reduce this index in their country?” Let me know if anything happens for you.....
Until next time (and waiting for an answer),
Peripatetic Scribe
Interesting and thought-provoking, P.S. I wonder whether there are large differences in "misery" between north and south? I shall also use the idea to get children thinking about "happiness" and "misery": what do THEY understand by these words....good stuff!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous- building on your comment, I wonder whether there is any difference between North Island and South Island; that would be an interesting viewpoint. I guess there are few statistics to use as a comparison.... thanks for your comment, and good luck with the misery/happiness discussion!
ReplyDeleteExtremely interesting, P.S.! I wish "important" people in Croatia could read this blog post. Perhaps they'd attempt to lower the figures for our country at least in order to keep abreast of with the west if not for other (much more significant) reasons.
ReplyDeleteLucana
Thanks, Lucana. Actually your government has a very clever game-plan: everything will turn out "golden" from 1 July 2013! (Sorry, being facetious!)But it seems to me virtually all "powers" are waiting for "something" (maybe Godot?)
ReplyDelete