But isn’t our current happiness deficit more than 0.5 points? We didn’t invent liberal capitalism in 2020, so liberal capitalism didn’t cause our current round of unhappiness. (although both are still within the liberal mainstream, and no country outside the liberal mainstream has ever managed to equal current US happiness levels. What’s the point of liberalism, if plausible rates of GDP growth can only buy us about one point of extra happiness per century? Sure, only one point better for our grandchildren in particular - but one point on a ten point scale is a big deal, larger than the entire COVID drop!