Bookslut review of Deep Economy

"...Every year since World War II, the National Opinion Research Council has asked a sample of Americans whether they were “very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy.” To judge by the responses, the U.S. was at its very happiest in the 1950s and has grown steadily gloomier since. The number of the not too happy has increased as well. As McKibben reports, “people born in advanced countries after 1955 are three times as likely as their grandparents to have a serious bout of depression” -- and this increase does not owe just to better diagnosis or more awareness of the disease. The same pattern holds for other developed countries as well. Up to a certain point -- for those living in poverty, for example -- “more” increases aggregate and individual levels of happiness; after that point, though, happiness becomes subject to the laws of diminishing returns, until the returns become losses and “more” actually correlates with unhappiness.

One cause for this unhappiness may be work: in order for the economy to continue to grow, Americans must work as much or even more than they have in the past -- and much more than workers in comparably industrialized countries. For example, on average Americans work 199 more hours per year today than they did in 1973. And while Americans make 29 percent more money than European workers, they also work about 338 more hours per year than a German worker. That schedule leaves, McKibben theorizes, much less time for what does make us happy: spending time with our families and in our communities. To put it bluntly, we work longer hours to buy more things to make ourselves more miserable.

The solution to all these economic ills -- inequality, sustainability, and happiness -- lies, McKibben argues, in revitalizing local economies and local communities. The remainder of his book documents various efforts -- most of them drawn from his home state of Vermont -- to do just that. McKibben visits local farms (including urban ones), local radio stations, local wind farms, and local town hall meetings. He is careful not to wax sentimental about such efforts, but equally careful in trying to show that not only are such efforts possible but in many cases thriving. Moreover, that they are a welcome and perhaps even an unavoidable alternative to our current unsustainable, immiserating economy. He does a tolerable job, too, of responding to those who argue that abandoning economic growth means abandoning the half of the world currently living in poverty to their poverty. One, he argues, does not necessarily follow from the other..."