The Road to Freedom

by Arthur C. Brooks

  2Polling data show, for example, that when asked what effect they expect from the health care bill, more Americans say they expect it to increase healthcare costs than say they expect it to decrease costs, and more Americans expect the health-care bill to make health care worse than expect it to make care better. See Jeffery M. Jones, “Many Americans Doubt Costs, Benefits of Healthcare Reform,” Gallup.com, September 16, 2009. www.gallup.com/poll/122969/many-americans-doubt-costs-benefits-heatlthcare-reform.aspx

  3The current debt estimate comes from http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/.

  4Frank Newport, “Despite Negativity, Americans Mixed on Ideal Role of Gov’t,” Gallup.com, September 28, 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/149741/Despite-Negativity-Americans-Mixed-Ideal-Role-Gov.aspx.

  5Bret Stephens, “Lessons From Europe (Take 2),” Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576510200756243420.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop.

  6Debt statistic from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2011), OECD.Stat, (database), doi: 10.1787/data-00285-en.

  7See Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (Madison Books, 1991); and Charles Murray, “The Happiness of the People,” Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, 2009.

  8Arthur Brooks, The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future (Basic Books, 2010).

  9Joel Roberts, “Poll: The Politics of Healthcare,” CBS News/New York Times, June 14, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/opinion/polls/main2528357.shtml. According to a 2011 CBS news poll 51 percent of Americans said that they disapproved of the healthcare law, versus 35 percent who approved of it. See http://www.american.com/archive/datapoint-entries/healthcare-update.

  10Jonathan Haidt, “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology,” Science 316, no. 5827 (May 18, 2007): 998–1002.

  11George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant! (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004). Another reason why statists win the moral debates about our system is that they have figured out better than the right how to “frame” the arguments. The master of political argument framing is George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. In his 2004 bestseller Don’t Think of an Elephant!, Lakoff argues that when it comes to successful politics, those who control the moral language get to frame the debate and win the hearts of voters. In progressive framing, free enterprise advocates are rigid and selfish, and their inability to make a strong moral case for freedom has only reinforced this view.

  12Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

  13Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776.

  14Philip S. Foner, ed., “Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825,” The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Halcyon House, 1950), 802.

  15Yasmine Ryan, “How Tunisia’s Revolution Began,” Al Jazeera, January 26, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/2011126121815985483.html; Yasmine Ryan, “The Tragic Life of a Street Vendor,” Al Jazeera, January 20, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201111684242518839.html.

  16Leon Aron, “Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong,” Foreign Policy, July-August 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/everything_you_think_you_know _about_the_collapse_of_the_soviet_union_is_wrong

  17Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, January 27, 1987, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=34430#axzz1RL21sVlN

  18Charles A. Murray, Losing Ground: American social policy, 1950–1980 (Basic Books, 1984).

  19Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Frank Shuffelton (Penguin Books, 1999).

  20Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress,” January 4, 1935, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 4, The Court Disapproves, 1935, ed. Samuel Rosenman (Random House, 1938).

  21Murray, Losing Ground.

  22The legislation to reform welfare was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

  23U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Poverty in the United States: 1999”; “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage: 2003”; http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/welfarereform; John J. DiIulio Jr., “Older & Wiser?” The Weekly Standard 011, no. 1 (2005).

  24John Ifcher, “The Happiness of Single Mothers after Welfare Reform,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 11, no. 1 (2011): 4–22.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1Catherine Rampell, “The Self-Employed Are the Happiest,” New York Times Economix Blog, September 16, 2009, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/the-self-employed-are-the-happiest/

  2For salary information, see http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Small+Business+Owner&cty=&sid=&kw=Small +Business+Owner&jn=jn037&edu=&tid=105988; http://www.cbsalary.com/national-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=Small+Business+Owner&cty=&sid=&kw=Small+Business+Owner&jn=jn037&edu=&tid=105988. On the benefit differential between public and private workers, see 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

  3Lymari Morales, “Self-employed Workers Clock the Most Hours Each Week,” Gallup.com, August 26, 2009, http://www.gallup.com/poll/122510/Self-Employed-Workers-Clock-Hours-Week.aspx

  4Richard A. Easterlin, “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence,” in Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz, eds. Paul A. David and Melvin W. Reder (Academic Press Inc, 1974), 89–125

  5More recently, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have questioned the Easterlin Paradox, citing Gallup public opinion surveys from around the world. They conclude that rising national income levels do indeed raise national levels of subjective well-being. See Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 14282, August 2008, http://www.nber.org/papers/w14282.pdf. Economists over the decades have found other ways to examine the relationship between income and happiness. In a recent study, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his Princeton University colleague Angus Deaton analyzed a survey of 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009. The survey asked respondents to not only evaluate the quality of their lives, but also to report on their moods and levels of stress. They found that people who reported they were poor said that earning more money raised their mood, lowered their likelihood of depression, decreased stress, and made them more likely to evaluate the overall quality of their lives as higher. But this effect evaporated at about $75,000 per year in annual income. After that, people continued to say their life was getting better, but they actually got no happier: Their mood was not significantly brighter, they were no less susceptible to depression, and they experienced no less stress than they did at a lower income level. See Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 7, 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011492107.

  6James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden, General Social Surveys, 1972–2004 (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, 2004).

  7Richard Easterlin, “The Worldwide Standard of Living Since 1800,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 1 (2000): 7–26

  8Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36, no. 8 (1978): 917–927, http://education.ucsb.edu/janeconoley/ed197/documents/brickman_lotterywinnersandaccidentvictims.pdf

  9Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford University Press, 1759, 1976), 149.

  10Richard Easterlin, “Explaining Happiness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100:19, September 16,
2003, 11176–11183.

  11Roper-Starch Organization, Roper Reports 79-1 (Roper Center, University of Connecticut, 1979).

  12Roper-Starch Organization, Roper Reports 95-1 (Roper Center, University of Connecticut, 1995).

  13George Orwell, 1984, ed. Erich Fromm (Harcourt, 1949), 58.

  14Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), 403.

  151996 General Social Survey. This analysis uses a probit estimation to model the likelihood of saying one is “very happy” on a dummy variable indicating one feels “very successful” or “completely successful,” income, and the other demographics listed. The coefficients are evaluated at the margin using the mean value of the regressors. 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).

  16John Mirowsky and Catherine E. Ross. Aging, Status, and Sense of Control (ASOC), 1995, 1998, 2001 [United States] [Computer file]. ICPSR03334-v2. Ohio State University [producer], 2001. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-12-15. In these data, people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that they were responsible for their own successes. Those who “agreed” or “agreed strongly” said they felt sad, on average, 0.96 days per week. Those who “disagreed” or “disagreed strongly” were sad an average of 1.2 days per week.

  17Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, trans. R. Opie (Harvard University Press, 1934).

  18“BET’s Robert Johnson to Obama: Stop Attacking the Wealthy,” Real Clear Politics Video, October 2, 2011, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/02/bets_robert_johnson_to_obama_stop_attacking_the_wealthy.html

  19James 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).

  20J. J. Froh, J. Fan, R. A. Emmons, G. Bono, E. S. Huebner, and P. Watkins, “Measuring Gratitude in Youth: Assessing the Psychometric Properties of Adult Gratitude Scales in Children and Adolescents,” Psychological Assessment, March 28, 2011, advance online publication, doi: 10.1037/a0021590.

  21In 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).

  22Steven 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.

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

  24M. 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.

  25John 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

  26Andrew 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

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

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

  29In 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

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

  31Edward 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

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

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

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

  35Adam 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.

  362002 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).

  37Ibid.

  38Ibid.

  39Ibid. 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.

  40Ibid. 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.

  411998 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)

  42Adrian 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.

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

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

  45Charles Schwab recounted this to the author.

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

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

  48W. 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.

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

  50Luigi 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

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

  52Matt 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

  53Several 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/

  54Video 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

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