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Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

Polly Toynbee

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Polly Toynbee
Age: 77
Born: 1946
Born: December 27
Journalist
Reporter
Wight
Mary Louisa Toynbee
States
Unemployment
People
Unhappy
Influence
Working
State
Lives
Makes
Doe
Instability

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It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy.
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One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives.
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This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.
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Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP.
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