It sometimes takes an academic years of meticulous research to stumble of the blindingly obvious particularly if that academic is one of the beige cardiganed variety.

The gentleman who is pictured on the right is David Blanchflower who has recklessly cast aside his beige cardigan in response to a barmy Dartmouth afternoon. He is an economist with Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs and he has had an epiphany. David says

There's a growing body of research that is finding that more income does not necessarily correlate to increased happiness. We are learning that things like employment, marriage and good health contribute to happiness more directly. This report makes it clear that economic policies should not be divorced from social and health policies.

Wow, fancy that!

This flash of insight has arisen through his study of Scotland where he found that, although they are now significantly wealthier, the Scots enjoy little satisfaction in life and endure a variety of health problems.

Scots have high rates of obesity, AIDS, coronary disease, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and asthma, for example. The rate of diabetes among people in Scotland younger than 15 is one of the highest in the world. Furthermore, more people in Scotland below retirement age were inactive (not working) due to sickness or disability than in the UK as a whole.

The problem, of course, is that in todays economic rationalist environment everything must be assigned a monetary value before it can be considered.

Here is the news flash, money means virtually nothing and being wealthier than you are now means nothing. Before you start protesting that you are poor consider that you have access to the internet and are literate enough to read The Green Man. This in itself means that you are one of the wealthier of the earths occupants.

Read more here.