The Honor Of God

QUOTE OF THE DAY: 

Off and on, usually provoked by the release of a new study, the media will turn to the question of happiness and incomes. While the Wall Street Journal has exhibited a tendency to tout research that shows that the rich are happier, the results are far less clear-cut. Once a certain income level has been reached (typically, enough to provide for a middle class standard of living in that society and allow one to accumulate a cushion for emergencies) more money does not produce much if any gains in happiness. And some findings have been under-reported in the US. For instance, while some studies have found that being in the top income group or having high educational attainment is correlated with higher levels of happiness, living in socially stratified societies leads to less satisfaction across all groups. And remember, Nigeria, hardly a bastion of wealth, has scored as the happiest country in a multi-year international survey.

An article today in the Financial Times suggests that researchers may have been looking at the wrong axis in looking for a strong correlation between income and happiness. Roberto Foa (a researcher in the same international survey mentioned above) contends that freedom is a far more important factor than economic attainment.  http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/08/key-to-happiness-is-freedom-not-income.html

Born in Russia one year after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn outlived the political system that persecuted him, surviving its horrible network of labor camps while documenting its myriad crimes. Solzhenitsyn’s writings, argues David L. Tubbs in the Fall 2007 issue of the Claremont Review of Books, are indispensable for understanding the 20th century.

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1493/article_detail.asp

A review of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, by Joseph Pearce
and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology, by Daniel J. Mahoney

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is almost a forgotten man, as much a relic of the Cold War as a broken bit of the Berlin Wall. He is also one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, and has had more direct influence on politics than any other author since Jean Jacques Rousseau.

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.738/article_detail.asp