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Capitalism Failed Us – Here is Why
By Shlomo Maital
David Brooks’ latest NYT column has the fascinating title “Why More People in the World Are Feeling Hopeful (Except Us)” The ‘us’ is of course the US.
Brooks cites results from the Harvard-led Global Flourishing Study published in Nature – Mental, April 30, 2025. Flourishing measures the wellbeing of people, measured by happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and finance. In other words, how countries measure up according to material, social and spiritual wellbeing.
The US ranks 12th or 15th out of 22 leading nations. The nations who have done well and risen in ‘flourishing’ are those that find a true balance between those three elements: material, spiritual and social. The US has done poorly, especially among its young people, who report NOT doing well and NOT having much hope for the future.
Why? Brookins recounts: “Why have rich nations lagged behind in this way? [Prof.] VanderWeele [who led the study] theorizes that maybe it’s a question of priorities. “I tend to think you end up getting what you value most,” he told me. “When a society is oriented toward economic gain, you will be moderately successful, but not if it’s done at the expense of meaning and community.”
Brooks continues: “I’d add that we in the West have aggressively embraced values that when taken to excess are poisonous to our well-being. Over the past several decades, according to the World Values Survey, North America, Western Europe and the English-speaking nations have split off culturally from the rest of the world. Since the 1960s we have adopted values that are more secular, more individualistic and more oriented around self-expression than the values that prevail in the Eastern Orthodox European countries such as Serbia, the Confucian countries like South Korea and the mostly Catholic Latin countries like Mexico.”
We sold our souls to capitalism. It gave us vast wealth, billionaires. But it destroyed our souls. Thank economists in part for that. Mea culpa.
Postscript: My country, Israel, now a pariah among nations, vilified, owing to our disastrous leadership, ranks second or fourth (with or without the financial variable). In Israel, social bonds are very strong, especially during times of war and crisis. And so are spiritual values, not necessarily formal religious ones. Plus, our hi-tech has brought us material gain. But we did not sell our souls to the Capitalist Devil.
National Happiness – 2013 Rankings
By Shlomo Maital
Three eminent economists – Richard Layard, John Helliwell and Jeffrey Sachs – combine to prepare an annual World Happiness Report. Their measure is based on self-assessed happiness, interpreted as “satisfaction with life” together with the perceived emotion of wellbeing. In their latest report, for the years 2010-12, (see above), Scandinavian and Northern European countries rank highest, along with Canada, Austria, and surprisingly, my country Israel (11th), despite the Mideast conflict, and Costa Rica, a relatively poor but serene and beautiful country. Note that Mexico, at 16th, ranks above the United States, despite the latter’s $50,000 GDP per capita.
Why? The answer is simple. Happiness, note the authors, is driven in part by the standard of living (per capita GDP), but also by life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, and generosity. This is why Qatar, the wealthiest country in the world by far, with per capita GDP of nearly $100,000, ranks only 27th, because it is a rigid autocracy.
I am amazed at how poorly individuals and whole nations practice the simple art of best-practice benchmarking. If you are a political leader, and if your avowed goal is to improve the wellbeing of your citizens, the ones who elected you, would you not explore the world and visit the places in which people are the happiest, and try to find out why? And would you not try to bring home some of the “recipes” they use – income equality, social support, generosity, social cohesion?
I get this response very often when I make this argument: Israel is not Denmark. Followed by all the excuses. And my response is: Well – why isn’t it? Can we make it so?
There is a lesson for individuals in this Report, not just for countries. True, you do need a basic level of income to be happy. But you also need the love and support of family, the generosity of others, and good health (supplied, as a public good “health care”, by good governments, or at least they should). Even if you have high income, if you lack the other ingredients, the income may not help much. Keep this in mind.
TIMnovate 