Third, happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and societies. As individuals, we are unhappy if we are denied our basic material needs, but we are also unhappy if the pursuit of higher incomes replaces our focus on family, friends, community, compassion, and maintaining internal balance. As a society, it is one thing to organize economic policies to keep living standards on the rise, but quite another to subordinate all of society’s values to the pursuit of profit.
Yet politics in the US has increasingly allowed corporate profits to dominate all other aspirations: fairness, justice, trust, physical and mental health, and environmental sustainability. Corporate campaign contributions increasingly undermine the democratic process, with the blessing of the US Supreme Court.
via The Economics of Happiness – Jeffrey D. Sachs – Project Syndicate.
Truth and Traditions 
Mr. Sachs does well to point the finger at corporate capitalism, but provides little in the way of alternatives. Corporatization equals globalization, which itself is founded on the near-religion of ever-increasing global trade. The antidote? Economic localization. Not as an absolute or dogma, but as a central guiding principle of economic development. Sounds impractical? Well, it’s already happening. Watch the newly-released documentary, ‘The Economics of Happiness’, and get a flavor of the future. In an era of climate change and peak oil, economic globalization is simply unsustainable; we will have no option but to move in another direction. The good news is that as we decrease the scale of economic activity, we actually increase not only our own well-being but the health of the planet.
Yes. One problem with economic globalization is that too many people’s fates depend too strongly on a small handfuls of ‘supply chains’. When one ‘link’ goes, millions on millions suffer. That’s NOT sustainable. We need to break up and limber up so localities are more autonomous and resilient,