Albert Brooks: Hoover Institute
Although the Declaration of Independence characterizes “the pursuit of happiness”—along with life and liberty—as an inalienable right, the protection of which is government’s primary task, Brooks finds in the Declaration an obligation to foster the pursuit of happiness. He urges conservatives to unite goal with tone by becoming “happy warriors” fighting for the institutions that, according to both scholarly research and traditional wisdom, make for happy lives: faith, family, community, and meaningful work.
But doesn’t the free enterprise system promote materialism and hedonism? Brooks replies that the confusion of love of things and physical pleasure with happiness in the fullest sense is not specific to capitalism but is a mistake as old as the hills. In America as elsewhere, education—particularly at home and in religious institutions—must teach that people come before things and that achieving material prosperity is not the essence of happiness but a means by which the happiness that comes from faith, family, community and work is pursued.
http://www.hoover.org/research/conservative-heart
Well put, I would add that the measurable bits of econ are wanting in that a high trust society is part of the wealth effect. Of course in our ever worsening society wealth is measured by how big a house you can finance in a neighborhood where the purely rational economic actors won’t loot you if the power goes off.