If this is true, perhaps economic growth should not be a government's chief concern. Every day, Oswald notes, journalists and politicians give out the message that better economic performance means more happiness for the nation. This idea is rarely questioned. We feel that we would be happier if our boss raised our pay, and assume that countries must be roughly the same. Reported levels of 'satisfaction with life' in Europe are only slightly higher than they were 20 years ago.
Some countries show drops.
The rate of suicide among men has risen in almost all Western nations from the 1970s to the present. Rich countries seem to have high suicide rates. But if money buys little well-being, why do we still see people around us constantly striving to make more of it. This suggests that intuition is capable of misleading us about the national benefits of improved economic performance. Such intuition has been built up by observing how each of us feels as our income rises.