'Happiness is not just about GDP': ambitious plan or utopia?(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
'Happiness is not just about GDP': ambitious plan or utopia?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/happiness-is-not-just-about-gdp-ambitious-plan-or-utopia
2 comments
> While critics will question the feasibility of this vision because it relies on a radical reform of global financial institutions and massive wealth taxes – both of which have long been dismissed as unthinkable by rich countries – there can be no worthwhile assessment of its value without considering the far bleaker options offered by the far right and the old left.
"Chief among them is the far-right techno-extractivist vision championed by the US president, Donald Trump, and his supporters in Silicon Valley, who are putting artificial intelligence ahead of renewable technology."
Powerful countries like China are also putting everything into AI, so this should be the current focus of the US. We should be focusing on Nuclear. The sad part is that if the environmental activists of the 60s->90s hadn't pushed so hard against Nuclear and gotten legislation in place to essentially make it impossible to innovate, we wouldn't even need renewable energy today.
"If the billionaires and the centimillionaires of the world were conducting our economy, investing the money in a way that brings us to a fantastic future with planetary habitability, rising wages and better housing conditions and health conditions for all, then everybody would be happy to give them the keys. But that’s not what we see."
The alternative proposed is the government take all of the money and equally distribute it. This solution always ends up with worse outcomes. With what's happening with the EU with complete censorship and in the UK with people going to jail for expressing their freedom of speech, we need less government involvement in our lives and not more.
The government is never held accountable for spending our money and in most cases, it goes into a pit/slush fund that is hidden from the public.
Powerful countries like China are also putting everything into AI, so this should be the current focus of the US. We should be focusing on Nuclear. The sad part is that if the environmental activists of the 60s->90s hadn't pushed so hard against Nuclear and gotten legislation in place to essentially make it impossible to innovate, we wouldn't even need renewable energy today.
"If the billionaires and the centimillionaires of the world were conducting our economy, investing the money in a way that brings us to a fantastic future with planetary habitability, rising wages and better housing conditions and health conditions for all, then everybody would be happy to give them the keys. But that’s not what we see."
The alternative proposed is the government take all of the money and equally distribute it. This solution always ends up with worse outcomes. With what's happening with the EU with complete censorship and in the UK with people going to jail for expressing their freedom of speech, we need less government involvement in our lives and not more.
The government is never held accountable for spending our money and in most cases, it goes into a pit/slush fund that is hidden from the public.