ROUND AND ROUND ON SUMPTUARY LAWS. Arnold Kling has taken issue with recent writings by Cornell's Robert Frank on measured happiness and positional arms races. The passage that sets off Mr Kling reads,

The evidence thus suggests that if income affects happiness, it is relative, not absolute, income that matters...In most cases, the person who stays at the office two hours longer each day to be able to afford a house in a better school district has no conscious intention to make it more difficult for others to achieve the same goal...Yet the ineluctable mathematical logic of musical chairs assures that only 10 percent of all children can occupy top-decile school seats, no matter how many hours their parents work.

Mr Kling suggests, instead,

Suppose that in order to try to illustrate his thesis, Professor Frank had used as an example a person who stays at the office two hours longer each day in order to pay for a tutor for a learning-disabled child. This example leaves us favorably disposed toward the parent, whereas Frank's example does not. Because Frank talks about educational opportunity as a relative concept, and above all because he talks about trying to get into the top decile, he is able to manipulate the reader into seeing the hypothetical parent's choice as a vain and futile quest. Thus, Frank is able to insinuate that working extra hours to try to pay for a better education for your child is pathological behavior.

To put it another way, if every parent were competing to give our children the best possible education, and that resulted in better education for everyone, that would seem rational and constructive. But in Robert Frank's morality play, the main characters are compulsively competing for the highest relative status, with no actual improvement in education. In an essay (based on a book) where he claims to be speaking from scientific authority, Frank stoops to proof by loaded example.

Reality is probably somewhat more complicated (although it's OK for economists to invent worlds that can't exist so as to better be able to grasp the essential elements of the world that does exist.) Consider the latest from suburban-dwelling 11-D, missing something from the party platforms.

I wanted more discussion about the vast debt that American families have encurred to achieve a good life for their kids. Housing costs, schools of uneven quality, growing demands of the workplace, the lack of support from extended family or community are a tightening tourniquet on average Americans.

The reality is that people do have to compete for the highest relative status, and one driver of that competition is the quest for the better school districts, which often come bundled with more expensive housing, reflecting both the positional arms race (more income shifts the demand curve) and the principle of complements (the demand for the houses derives from the demand for the schools.)

Brock at Signifying Nothing weighs in with some observations about the usefulness of happiness research as a way of improving economics, a point somewhat orthogonal to that part of Professor Frank's argument being questioned by Mr Kling. Marginal Revolution offers some additional perspectives on happiness research.

Tech Central offers elaboration on the original debate, with Radley Balko proposing to Stop the World.

I propose that Congress pass the Saving Our Public Health from Innovation, Success, Trade, Riches, and Yearning bill, or the SOPHISTRY Act. On the day it's signed by the president, SOPHISTRY would license the federal government to freeze all salaries, wages, and other sources of income among the poor and lower middle class, thereby preventing any dangerous upward mobility between tax brackets. Any income earned above a citizen's current tax bracket would be taxed at 100%. All revenue from the tax would be specifically earmarked for the study of the affluence threat. The freeze would stay in effect until scientists can determine the cause of the link between prosperity and mortality.

Because wealth begets an increased chance of death, the SOPHISTRY Act will undoubtedly save thousands of lives. Perhaps millions. We owe it to America's poor to keep them poor until we can figure out why getting richer makes them die. And while critics might contend that Americans ought to be free to decide for themselves whether a bit of extra income is worth the deleterious health effects that come with affluence, it's obvious that at least so far, they simply aren't deciding correctly. Despite the obvious implications of the data above, Americans still insist on bettering their respective standards of living.

And when people make poor decisions about their own lives, it's government's job to make the correct decisions for them.

There is an open thread on the subject of happiness research and positional arms races at Econ Log.