Death by wellbeing

An interview with Tyson Yunkaporta on wellbeing. The idea of targeting government policy on wellbeing is a great opportunity to do things differently and better. Alas the way we're doing it, wellbeing means little and its presence in policy is rather like the theme at a ball. The New Zealand government tells us that it's targetting wellbeing in its budget, but if you look closely it's doing nothing of the kind. It tells us that its wellbeing budget has five 'themes' or priorities, but where did they come from. Did the literature or any other serious endeavour determine that. Not a bit of it. It was government spin. Some of the themes seem likely to correlate with wellbeing, but the wellbeing impacts of the new policy is not measured so we won't know how much they contribute to wellbeing. Others — like innovation — are a simple rebadging. They'd be in a non-wellbeing themed budget. You can also watch the interview here. (https://youtu.be/ra4OFTl4lb8)