Nothing can rescue Mr. Tim Harford’s jejune chatter,  as a pastiche of economic wisdom, but the Gallup’s annoyingly chirpy question goes a long way to explaining the utter trivialization of  the implied question in the headline :

A monetary remedy for the midlife crisis

All this becomes abundantly clear when we ask people about how they feel their lives are going. Gallup uses the following question: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally stand at this time?”

That implied question in Harford’s esssay, or at least its headline, might have been answered by a return to prosperity, in sum the manifestation of the Self-Correcting Market: where is that mythical concept,idea or object of faith ten years later?  The Gallup question reads like what David Brooks would write in his periodic ‘Life Evaluations’ comments on his readers communication with The Great Man, himself. And equally fruitless!

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/1da277e4-3100-11e8-ac48-10c6fdc22f03