The determinants of happiness are remarkably similar around the world, in countries as different as Afghanistan, the U.S, and Chile. Income matters to happiness but only so much; friends, freedom, and employment are good for happiness, while crime, poor health, and divorce are bad. Paradoxically, however, people in places like Afghanistan can be as happy as those in much wealthier and safer ones like Chile. One explanation is the remarkable human capacity to adapt to adversity and hardship. While adaptation may be a good thing for individual wellbeing, it can also result in collective tolerance for bad equilibrium which are difficult for societies to escape from.
Tagged with “crime”
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Happiness around the World: the paradox of happy peasants and miserable millionaires
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Into the Mind of a Financial Criminal
Before Bernie Madoff, there was the Antar family. In the seventies and eighties, the family ran a popular electronics chain, Crazy Eddie, which was known for its frenetic commercials and low prices. The business was crooked from the start, but the fraud got more serious when the family took the company public in the 1984.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/08/into_the_mind_of_a_financial_c.html
Tagged with crime economics finance white collar crazy eddie
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KQED’s Forum: The Art of Making Money
Author and journalist Jason Kersten joins us to discuss his new book, "The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter."
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R907081000?itemMD5=4b530e9d8cb37674e775a028a97ddbfc
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Bill Moyers with The Wire’s David Simon
Here Bill Moyers sits down with David Simon, executive producer of The Wire, the stunning HBO production. As anyone who has watched the show knows, The Wire is not just a splendid drama. It is, as Simon has once called it, “a political tract masquerading as a cop show.” It takes a penetrating and aesthetically rich look at some of America’s most vexing social issues. And it’s why Moyers says, “What Edward Gibbon was to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or Charles Dickens to the smokey, mean streets of Victorian London, David Simon is to America today.”
http://www.openculture.com/2009/04/bill_moyers_with_the_wires_david_simon.html