The Road to Freedom (24 page)

21
In this analysis, I ran a logit model of the binary variable “very happy” on age and a full battery of demographic covariates, using the 2004 GSS data. Using the fitted values of the regression, I calculated the first-order conditions, found the minimum happiness level with respect to age, and showed with the second-order conditions that it is a global minimum. Data: GSS 2004. James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden,
General Social Surveys, 1972–2006
(Storrs, Conn.: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, 2006).

22
Steven F. Maier and Martin E. Seligman, “Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology
105, no. 1 (March 1976): 3–46, doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3.

23
M. Seligman and Steven Maier, “Failure to escape traumatic shock,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology
74, no. 1 (May 1967): 1–9.

24
M. Seligman and Donald Hiroto, “Generality of learned helplessness in man,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
31, no. 2 (February 1975): 311–327. See also Thomas O'Rourke, Warren Tryon, and Charles Raps, “Learned helplessness, depression, and positive reinforcement,”
Cognitive Therapy and Research
4, no. 2 (1980): 201–209.

25
John Tierney, “A New Gauge to See What's Beyond Happiness,”
New York Times
, May 17, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/science/17tierney.html?pagewanted=all

26
Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine, “Comparing Federal and Private Sector Compensation,” American Enterprise Institute, Economic Policy Working Paper 2011-02,
http://www.aei.org/docLib/AEI-Working-Paper-on-Federal-Pay-May-2011.pdf

27
Erich Fromm,
Marx's Concept of Man: Milestones of Thoughts in the History of Ideas
(Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1961), 29.

28
Work in America,
Report of a Special Task Force to the Secretary of H.E.W.
(MIT Press, 1973).

29
In the words of Alexander Hamilton, “To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.”Alexander Hamilton,
Report on Manufactures
, December 5, 1791,
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch4s31.html

30
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(1835). Volume 1, book 2.

31
Edward C. Prescott, “Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans?”
Federal Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review
28 (2004): 2–13; Harry Mount, “Take a holiday, companies tell worried American workaholics,”
The Telegraph
(UK), August 21, 2006,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1526884/Take-a-holiday-companies-tell-worried-American-workaholics.html

32
Michael Elliott, “Europeans Just Want to Have Fun,”
Time
, July 22, 2003,
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,466081,00.html

33
A. Alesina, R. Di Tella, and R. MacCulloch “Inequality and happiness: Are Europeans and Americans different?”
Journal of Public Economics
88 (2004): 2009–2042.

34
Prescott, “Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans?”

35
Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, “Europeans Work to Live and Americans Live to Work (Who Is Happy to Work More: Americans or Europeans?),”
Journal of Happiness Studies
12 (2011): 225–243.

36
2002 GSS. James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden,
General Social Surveys, 1972–2004
(Storrs, Conn.: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, 2004).

37
Ibid.

38
Ibid.

39
Ibid. Imagine two workers who are identical in every way—same income, education, age, sex, family situation, religion, and politics—but the first is satisfied with his or her job and the second is not. The first person will be 28 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy in life. The probit model described regresses a dummy for a response of “very happy” on a dummy for reporting being “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with one's job, plus all the demographics listed. The coefficients are evaluated at the margin using the mean values of the covariates.

40
Ibid. We can show this statistically by predicting job satisfaction with something unrelated to overall happiness: the answer to the question of whether someone's “main source of satisfaction in life comes from work.” If the predicted value of job satisfaction is still related to happiness, it means the former is increasing the latter. Indeed, the statistical analysis shows that this is precisely the case. The procedure to test this hypothesis uses a full-information maximum likelihood tobit model. I regress a 0–2 measure of happiness on a measure of job satisfaction and a vector of demographics; the instrument for job satisfaction is a measure of whether someone says their main source of satisfaction in life comes from work, which is strongly correlated with job satisfaction but largely uncorrelated with general happiness. The resulting coefficient on the predicted value of job satisfaction is large, positive, and significant.

41
1998 GSS. James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden,
General Social Surveys, 1972–2004
(Storrs, Conn.: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, 2004)

42
Adrian White, “University of Leicester produces the first-ever ‘world map of happiness,'” University of Leicester press release, International Social Survey Programme, 2002,
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/uol-uol072706.php
Source: 2002 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung.

43
Paramhansa Yogananda,
Autobiography of a Yogi
, preface by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (Rider and Co., 1965).

44
Jonathan V. Last, “Do It Yourself,”
Philanthropy Magazine
, Spring 2011,
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/pdf/1675_63133847.pdf

45
Charles Schwab recounted this to the author.

46
Steven Rogers,
The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance and Business
(McGraw-Hill: 2002).

47
Cbsalary.com
.
http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Small+Business+Owner&cty=&sid=&kw=Small+Business+Owner&jn=jn037&edu=&tid=105988

48
W. Mischel, E. B. Ebbesen, and A. R. Zeiss, “Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
21 (1972): 204–218.

49
W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, and Monica Rodriguez, “Delay of gratification in children,”
Science
244, no. 4907 (May 1989): 933–938.

50
Luigi Guiso, Paolo Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, “Moral and Social Constraints to Strategic Default on Mortgages,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 15145, July 2009,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15145.pdf?new_window=1

51
O. Michel-Kerjan Erwann, “Catastrophe Economics: The National Flood Insurance Program,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
23, no. 4 (Fall 2010).

52
Matt Cover, “True Cost of Fannie, Freddie Bailouts: $317 billion, CBO says,”
CNSNews.com
, June 6, 2011,
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/true-cost-fannie-freddie-bailouts-317-bi
; Congressional Budget Office Testimony, “The Budgetary Cost of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Options for the Future Federal Role in the Secondary Mortgage Market,” June 2, 2011,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/122xx/doc12213/06-02-GSEs_Testimony.pdf

53
Several estimates find that taxpayers will lose about $14 billion from the automakers' bailout. Devin Dwyer, “How Much Did the Auto Bailout Cost Taxpayers?”
abcnews.com
Political Punch, June 3, 2011,
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/06/how-much-did-the-auto-bailout-cost-taxpayers/

54
Video available at
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279808/ows-protester-wants-college-paid-because-what-he-wants-charles-c-w-cooke

55
“Glenn Beck: Coming nanny state evidence,” October 31, 2008. Available at
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/17587/
. Video available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg98BvqUvCc

56
Kenneth Kaufman, “Tame Duck,” Milwaukee Milk Producer, 2, no. 6 (Sept. 1929):4.

CHAPTER THREE

1
See Jonathan Haidt, S. H. Keller, and M. G. Dias, “Affect, Culture, Morality, or Is It Wrong to Eat Your Dog?”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
65, no. 4 (1993): 613–628.

2
Ben Kenward and Matilda Dahl, “Preschoolers distribute scarce resources according to the moral valence of recipients' previous actions,”
Developmental Psychology
47, no. 4 (July 2011): 1054–1064; PsycINFO, EBSCOhost,
http://0-search.ebscohost.com.clark.up.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN =2011-10379-001&login.asp?custid=s8474154&site=ehost-live&scope=site

3
Rimma Teper, Michael Inzlicht, and Elizabeth Page-Gould, “Are we more moral than we think?: Exploring the role of affect in moral behavior and moral forecasting,”
Psychological Science
22, no. 4 (2011): 553–558; PsycINFO, EBSCOhost,
http://0-search.ebscohost.com.clark.up.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2011-07884-021&login.asp?custid=s8474154&site=ehost-live&scope=site
. The fact that this test was performed in Canada might lead one to ask whether the results would be the same in other countries.

4
See, for example, Laura Seifert, “On H1N1: ‘We're Prepared for the Worst,'”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/06/ftn/main5291052.shtml

5
A third definition commonly discussed in the social science literature is reciprocity or the belief that if I do something for you, you should do something for me in exchange.

6
Real Clear Politics Video, October 18, 2010,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/10/18/pelosi_need_to_address_fairness_of_ownership_and _equity_in_america.html

7
Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on International Tax Reform,” May 4, 2009,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-The-President-On-International-Tax-Policy-Reform/

8
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman,
Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 128–149,
http://www.vietnamica.net/op/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Free_To_Choose_Friedman.pdf

9
The higher percentage of rejected offers comes on the East Coast; the lower percentage on the West Coast. Hessel Oosterbeek, Randolph Sloof, and Gijs van de Kuilen, “Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis,”
Experimental Economics
7, no. 2, 2004: 171–188,
http://0-search.proquest.com.clark.up.edu/docview/222837285?accountid=14703

10
To all you experimentalists: I know this does not follow proper experimental protocols, the data are not i.i.d., etc. Keep your shirt on, I'm trying to write an interesting book here.

11
Actually, the big winner is our family dentist.

12
World Values Surveys Databank, “Fairness: One Secretary is Paid More,” World Values Survey, United States V115, 2006.

13
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, (Literary Classics of the United States
, 2004), 57.

14
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816. Abraham Lincoln said this in a speech in Connecticut in 1860: “I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.” At this, the crowd broke into thunderous applause.
Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at New Haven, Connecticut,” March 6, 1860,
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
, vol.4, ed. Roy P. Basler (Abraham Lincoln Association, 1953), 24.

15
Venture capitalist Kip Hagopian deals eloquently with issues of luck in the case of progressive taxation. See Kip Hagopian, “The Inequity of the Progressive Income Tax,”
Policy Review
, no. 166 (April 1, 2011),
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/72291

16
Mark Perry, “Income Mobility in the Dynamic U.S. Economy,” The Enterprise Blog, March 29, 2011,
http://blog.american.com/2011/03/income-mobility-in-the-dynamic-u-s-economy/

17
Daniel P. McMurrer and Isabel C. Sawhill, “Economic Mobility in the United States,” Urban Institute, October 1, 1996,
http://www.urban.org/publications/406722.html

18
Isabel V. Sawhill and Mark Condon, “Is U.S. Income Inequality Really Growing?: Sorting Out the Fairness Question,”
Policy Bites
(Urban Institute, 1992).