From the trailer of, “The Economics of Happiness.”
· “The number of Americans that say “Yes, I’m very happy with my life,” peaks in 1956 and goes slowly and steadily downhill ever since.” Bill McKibben author of Deep Economy USA
· “The stresses on the average household have increased enormously.” Professor Juliet Schorr author of The Overworked American.
· “You often hear about efficiencies of scale, but the truth is what we’ve developed today is a system that could not be more wasteful. We have tunafish caught on the east coast of America flown to Japan, processed, flown back to America and sold to consumers. We have English apples flown to South Africa to be waxed, back again to be sold to consumers. The whole process involves incredible quantities of waste.” Zac Goldsmith Member of Parliament UK
· “Only with a full cost accounting system (a true cost accounting system) will we begin to understand that goods that are shipped from ten thousand miles away are actually far more expensive than goods produced locally.” Ron Colman, Executive Director, GPI Atlantic Canada
The Economics of Happiness - advertised as “a one-hour documentary film that explores
local solutions to our pressing global problems” – was screened at The Booksmith in the Haight on January 17th. Director Helena Norberg-Hodge spoke afterwards and answered questions.
local solutions to our pressing global problems” – was screened at The Booksmith in the Haight on January 17th. Director Helena Norberg-Hodge spoke afterwards and answered questions.
The movie begins with the Director herself filmed with the indigenous people of Ladakh, India, with whom she lived for several decades as an anthropologist. During her time spent with them, she saw how exposure to the “more developed” west created dramatic changes.
She writes: "When I first arrived in Leh, the capital of 5,000 inhabitants, cows were the most likely cause of congestion and the air was crystal clear. Within five minutes' walk in any direction from the town centre were barley fields, dotted with large farmhouses. For the next twenty years I watched Leh turn into an urban sprawl. The streets became choked with traffic, and the air tasted of diesel fumes. 'Housing colonies' of soulless, cement boxes spread into the dusty desert. The once pristine streams became polluted, the water undrinkable. For the first time, there were homeless people. The increased economic pressures led to unemployment and competition. Within a few years, friction between different communities appeared. All of these things had not existed for the previous 500 years."
The movie uses Ladak as a springboard to discuss the effects of globalization, something Norberg-Hodge says has, “worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment.”
Globalization has specifically:
· Subsidized the middle man and causing pricing inefficiencies, so that the price of exported goods are often cheaper than products produced locally, even something as basic as milk or butter. The effect is job scarcity, because production is in the hands of the few that are subsidized to choose machines over people.
· Caused urban sprawl as job scarcity (from subsidized exports) has pushed urban populations into the city.
· Has given large corporations incredible political power, often outside of the countries they were created in.
The antidote, the movie says, is “localization.” Simple policy steps could lower unemployment and environmental pollution, says Norberg-Hodge. It is our responsibility to be economically literate and take our government back. Start regulating big business.
