Ive been reading and making notes from: Wellbeing Economics: Future Directions for New Zealand, Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders, (Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 2014). Dalziel and Saunders identify five principles, which they say define Wellbeing economics and which they recommend New Zealanders (and their government) should adopt: Principle 1: The purpose of economic activity is to promote the wellbeing of persons. Principle 2: The wellbeing of persons is related to their capabilities to lead the kinds of lives they value and have reason to value. Principle 3: Economic policies should expand the substantive freedom of persons to lead the kinds of lives they value and have reason to value. Principle 4: Wellbeing is created through persons making time-use choices they judge will contribute to their leading the kinds of lives they value. Principle 5: Market production should enable persons to add value to the kinds of lives they value. Dalziel and Saunders devote the rest of their (fairly short) book to explaining these principles and how their practice is likely to lead to New Zealanders feeling better about their lives than they do under current policy settings. I was interested to read how Dalziel and Saunders regard the capabilities approach, pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen (together with legal and political philosopher Martha Nussbaum, another favourite of mine) as an alternative to current orthodoxy (the Washington consensus, out of the Chicago school of economics, with the law and economics movement providing the coercive machinery). I think wellbeing economics lends itself to public discourse based on an ethic of fairness, which used to ground the Labour Party before its right-turn in 1984. I think Labour should return to those grounds but it must update its implementation of them to make them relevant to 21st century social and economic conditions. Difficult but not impossible if only the political will exists.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 00:16:41 +0000
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