James Bartholomew

They learned from us – now we need to learn from them The last time I visited Singapore, I stayed at the charmingly run-down, distinctly colonial Raffles Hotel. I drank a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar, contemplated a well-fed cockroach in my room and fancied myself to be following in the footsteps of Somerset Maugham. It was more than 30 years ago. I felt like Milord Anglais, making my tour around the still pretty exotic Far East. Well, that’s all gone. Visiting again earlier this month I found a Singapore so prosperous that any possible sense of effortless and, of course, undeserved superiority has been replaced by something close to the opposite.

What makes you happy? If you did not think anybody cared, you could not be more wrong. Your happiness has become a major issue. It is being investigated by professors with regression analyses. It is being fussed over by politicians who want to show their human side. The British government has decided to measure your happiness. Over in Paris, the OECD has recently come out with a major report on well-being. There is a growing band of academics studying your happiness, including Professors Layard and Oswald in Britain and Professors Gui and Becchetti in Italy. One of this growing band of happiness professors is Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich. He is appropriately smiley and cheerful and has come upon an aspect of happiness which surely has considerable political meaning.

Sweden is iconic, like Marilyn Monroe or Karl Marx. It is supposed to stand for something special: a kind of paradise where socialism and a big welfare state go together with being a successful, rich country. The left use it as a triumphant example: ‘See! It works in Sweden! High levels of equality, a big welfare state, socialism — and it works!’ People think that Sweden proves it is possible for a socialist welfare state to be prosperous, happy and civilised. They think it shows that relatively high levels of tax do not make much difference to economic performance. In fact, for the left, Sweden demonstrates that all that they dream of is possible.