Better than I expected. He makes attempts to buttress the weak points of the argument: that happiness is immeasurable, that opinion polls don't really reflect it. I'm not wholly convinced though, especially by the neuroscience argument that one hemisphere lights up more than the other, that's correlated with survey results, so therefore happiness is a survey-measurable single value.

The book's most persuasive with its specifics. For instance, it finds that people attach twice as much (negative) happiness to losing a certain amount of money to gaining it. He finds that people attach a strong happiness value to security. Therefore, he argues that governments should try to limit short-term instability and restructuring more than at present, since even temporarily losing and gaining a job or wealth affects happiness a great deal.

He also finds that unemployment is particularly bad for happiness since it involves losing money, security and a social network: therefore unemployment should be particularly discouraged.

He also makes a case that status anxiety keeps individuals in an unprofitable rat race attempting to all be richer than each other, and argues that governments should try to oppose this by measures like limiting working hours and restricting advertising..

In terms of the bigger ideas, that government should act principally to increase happiness, the book is less convincing and at times rather disturbing. Layard regards freedom as purely instrumental: it's a good thing insofar as it increases happiness (which he thinks it does) and no further. He's in favour of increased government-supplied anti-depressants and cognitive therapy, and government coercion to force the unemployed back into the workforce. It's hard to see why he doesn't just want to permanently add Prozac or Ecstasy to the water supply: it would fit the logic completely.

Some weaknesses that he doesn't really address:

• Whether survey-measured happiness really can keep growing if the government tried to maximize it. Suppose we're all plateau'd out?
• Why governments are better at maximizing our happiness than individuals themselves. Why can't we just decide to stop competing in the rat race ourselves if we want to.
• The trade-off between wealth and happiness. If his nanny-statism costs us economic growth, would the increased happiness from lack of rat-racing really compensate for the happiness we gain from wealth.
• Can methods to reduce status differentials really be effective?
• Why should we concentrate on national happiness? Why not increase our own wealth and then distribute it as overseas aid, sacrificing our happiness for that of billions.

What I'm Reading 2
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. Third in the "Harry Dresden" series of magic detective novels: skipped the second.

Much improved over the first one. Butcher's confident enough to have a much bigger cast of characters now, which means there's a lot more uncertainty over the villain. This one actually seems to move away from the whodunnit format though: there's some element of it, but most of the plot concerns power struggles between characters and groups of characters. A lot of the focus is on how the magic system will work out: it's quite science-fictional in the sense that it's interested in a system.

This one's a bit darker and more angsty. Very pacey plot though it gets a bit Perils of Pauline when lots of chapters have cliffhanger endings. Will definitely be looking out for further ones.

Museums
Went to see the Blind Light Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward on Saturday. Some weak points, but overall, pretty excellent. Highlights: the delicate wire-sculptures of a human form embedded in a mesh of space; very impressive. The "Blind Light" room itself is also very eerie. It's just a perspex room full of steam, looks very unimpressive from the outside, but once you're in you're almost in a sensory-deprivation tank. You can only see a few feet, and the space seems several times bigger on the inside than it did from the outside. Would be very easy to lose your bearings: I was cowardly and close to the walls for the most part.

Definitely worth a visit. There was about a 15 minute queue outside for us to get tickets, for which the first slot was in an hour's time. Not too bad by some big exhibition standards, but much busier than the Hayward normally is. What was annoying were the further queues inside. Blind Light is worth it, but gave up halfway on the queue for the other room upstairs.

Web
Book extracts. Günter Grass on his war years. Guardian has a slightly different selection but with a lot of overlap.