Monday, June 30, 2008

My first entry

So here I am writing my first entry. Laying in bed yesterday night I decided to start writing a blog about one theme that seems to reenter my conscious mind on a daily basis: well being.
Questions relating to well being appear in numerous ways in my day to day life. Needless to say well being - or welfare - is a central theme throughout historic political theory and contemporary political discussions as well. Although the theme of well being can seem to be omnipresent in politics in a certain sense it has been lost in modern politics.
Looking at the contemporary political discussions in Denmark (my home country) there seems to be widespread agreement that the best tools to measure aggregated well being are economic.
This is nothing new as the Scandinavian welfare state historically was centered on economic redistribution as a primary tool for increased average well being.

Today however fundamental redistributive discussions are rare and instead welfare is being redefined to freedom of choice in choosing public goods and the freedom from excessive taxation. But are these economic indicators the best way to measure well being? Can well being even be aggregated at all, or is it an personal experience that cannot be measured?
The concept of well being can be used in many ways and have several meanings, in the following posts some of these will be explored, related and compared to each other.

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