[H]appiness studies have been diverted into an applied science. The happiness measurers very much want to direct us and are itching to engineer a happy society. They do not know what they are talking about, but are very willing to put “policies” about it into practice anyway.
Deirdre N. McCloskey, “Happyism: The creepy new economics of pleasure“, The New Republic, 28 June 2012.
Deirdre (née Donald, 1942) McCloskey teaches economics, history, English, communication, philosophy and classics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and economic history at the University of Gothenburg. Her latest book is Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
