The research on happiness, subjective well-being or overall satisfaction with your life is also an empirical question. Analyses of being happy donot only focus of overall happiness, but look much more into the details of happiness. Beyond the tricky longitudinal observations of happiness it is common scientific practice to deal with subdomains of happiness like satisfaction of employees with their job, satisfaction with one’s job beyond the honeymoon and hangover effect, best known from family studies.
Each of those subdomains has a significant effect on overall happiness. The novel “Happy Life” by David Foenkinos is an interesting example which focuses mainly on the subdomains of job satisfaction, satisfaction with private and romantic partners as the major domains of a happy life. As developed in the novel, people make job changes to re-orientate professional careers or reset their private life. A low point on the happiness scale in one domain might be compensated by higher levels in another domain. These impact from one domaine to another might have substantial time lags involved as well. More drastic resets (à la Foenkinos) can be avoided through focus on other subdomains of overall happiness as well.
How happy are you with your housing situation, neighborhood, your pet, your physical health? There a multiple +/-spill-over effects to overall happiness. Reading a novel might be one as well, just take time reserved to yourself.(Image BnF expo “women in sport”, 20024)
Fiscal Union
European Integration is slow and hard to come by. For others it is moving too fast (Brexit). Cultural diversity is a real asset of the EU. The economy or the economies are powerful on an international scale. Nevertheless, the diversity concerning the tolerance of fiscal deficits is still widely spread across the Member States of the EU (see image below). Some states seem to play it cool and run relatively high deficits compared to the EU averages. In OECD comparisons most of the above average fiscal deficits are closer to or even below OECD averages over time (link to pdf-file OECD, 2024). Within the EU differences in government expenditure as % of GDP or the indicator of Gross public debt according to the Maastricht Criteria range from 20% to 160% as percentage of GDP. This entails a different level of resilience to future crises. After we managed to leave the previous 3 crises (financial, Covid-19, energy) it is time to prepare for what might come next in terms of challenges. Preparing public deficits to be able to soften economic shocks is essential to be able to sustain yourself and support others. We seem to be a bit off-target to coordinate fiscal deficits across the Union. Eastern and Northern countries have suffienct scope to support expansionist fiscal policies, be it in the realm of a defence union or to address climate change. Southern Europe will find it more difficult to raise additional funds to prepare now for future challenges. Fiscal deficits might even be not only an economic phenomenon, but a cultural one as well. If we compare Japan with a deficit running at 240% with South Korea with 50% Asia is showing even larger diversity in terms of fiscal preparedness.
An economist’s stance on fiscal policy and fiscal union might depend much more on her/his region or country of origin than economists might want to believe.
Images: OECD Economic Surveys: Belgium 2024, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/c671124e-en. p.17. 
freight transport
The transport of goods is an important and crucial economic sector to achieve reductions in CO2 emissions. According to statistics from Eurostat Total Road Freight Transportation increased by an annual 0.6% percent between 2019 and 2023. Considering the slack during the Covid-19 economic restrictions this is a remarkable development. Most people agree that more freight on rail could allow a much better performance concerning CO2 emissions. This needs substantial investments in infrastructure and intelligent solutions for optimised and accessible freight loading points. The logistics of the last mile for delivery has found many innovative solutions with battery-supported e-vehicles. The tough issue seems to be the production of e-lorries at competitive prices to the Diesel-engines. Considering the legal obligations to take breaks to ensure sufficient concentration of lorry drivers, the battery charging infrastructure has to be planned accordingly. Ports and airports a certainly key infrastructure for freight transport as well. Industry has additional key locations with high freight frequencies and tonne-kilometres. Eurostat data show that EU-wide empty running vehicles account for about 22%. Scope for optimization is, therefore, a continuous challenge for the sector.
E-transportation is high on the agenda in the sector and production of e-lorries a big challenge. There a many positive signs that the sector has taken up the challenge as there are an estimated 100.000 € per year cost advantage of battery-driven lorries compared to traditional ones (Le Monde 2024-9-24 p.16). This is simply a long-term survival issue for the sector. Smart transport solutions add to the productivity potential of the sector in combination with electrification. 
Sufficient
What do we mean by sufficient? Sufficient of what? French philosophers currently debate the topic under the French notion of sobriété (sobriety). They give as English translation sufficiency, but the notions do not match exactly in the usual understanding of the words. In breaking with the economic rationale of more is always better, the idea of having sufficient food, room to live in or social contacts to not feel lonely, the notion of sufficiency hints towards a rethinking of our customary lifestyles. How many trousers are sufficient? Well, as with shoes there might be gender differences or more generally interpersonal differences or preferences to come to the conclusion of how many is sufficient. If we bring in the notion of sobriety in additional, we allow another social and/or ecological dimension. This may redefine what is sufficient based on judgments how much our planet can handle (emissions) and distributional judgments. The western lifestyle of the last 100 years is no role model for other countries to follow. It is urgent to rethink our growth based economic model to develop new socially viable ways of production and consumption. It seems to be a necessary condition to reconsider the notion of wellbeing and wealth from a sufficiency perspective. It is a sobering thought, isn‘t it?
Health GDP
A report by the WHO and the World Bank (2023) on universal health coverage and financial hardship has emphasized the difficulties to reach the goals defined by the strategic development goals (SDGs) by 2030 in this policy field. Moreover, the paper by Mazzucato and Ghebreyesus (2024) invites us to reconsider the importance of health in the overall assessment of development and progress. The authors ask us to “rethink the narrow focus on growth in gross domestic product (GDP) that typically dominates economic decision making”. There is of course a long debate on the status of health, GDP or wellbeing as major policy issues or even foundations of the a state’s major objective. For economists the question has been answered for decades to favor GDP growth and more or less the other objectives can be achieved with a time delay. Recently social scientists have highlighted the overall importance of wellbeing or happiness rather than GDP as stated in some constitutions. Health as an overall objective is another challenge to the existing economic framing of societies. In a traditional economic perspective the health sector is part of the GDP increasing public and private sector of the economy with insurers, equipment and persons contributing to it. On the other hand, health enters into the distribution or consumption part of the economy. Each country strikes its own balance between production and consumption. Put simply, in form of an equation where production equals consumption, health enters on both sides of the equation in each country. On the global, scale the distribution between costs and benefits of health have not narrowed over the past. The challenge for the world population remains steep. Considering unequal population growth across continents, the situation might get worse before it hopefully gets better. We still have to continue huge efforts to increase overall health on earth for example through large scale vaccination programs. (Image The tombstone of Molière in Paris 2024)
Olympic Medals
The distribution of Olympic medals across continents reveals the persistent inequality of rewards across the globe. The first African country in the overall ranking of countries by Olympic medals is Kenya on 17th place. All 11 medals including 4 gold medals were obtained in athletics and in running disciplines 800m and more. The financial resources needed to practice running as high level sport are probably the lowest one of all disciplines. Ethiopia is another African country with this tradition of high level long distance runners on the African continent. Equipment and coaching in other disciplines than athletics involves more infrastructure and becomes more costly and the possibility to reserve infrastructure for elite athletes of a country is more difficult if the infrastructure for the population at large is rather limited compared to the population size. Therefore, the Olympic tradition has to confront the challenge of unequal access to many disciplines of the Olympic Games also in Paris 2024. Being a very good athlete is just not enough if you lack the coaches, training and facilities to be able to compete with the well-equipped countries. The knowledge about the best details of a specific technique or optimization potentials are part of the Olympic challenges as well. The Americas, Europe and Asia might be confronted with new forms or another criticism of imperialist strategies, this time in the domain of sport. The winner or medalists take all. Country rankings appear a bit like the football device “money buys goals”. (Image, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, Extrait of Omar Victor Diop “Diaspora” 2014-2015).
Olympic Flame
The Olympic Games 2024 have started to attract attention long before the actual games. The arrival of the flame on the many stops on the way to Paris is each time an event of its own. The choice of persons who carry the flame and the parcour are carefully chosen and sponsors contribute to finance the ceremonies. With the tradition of the “Tour de France” which started in 1905 in Montgeron, the city in the vicinity of Paris knows how to organize popular events. Like for a marathon large crowds are waiting and watching along the track. Police and life guards watch over participants and spectators. Many volunteers participate to make the event an enjoyable experience for all. The sports competitions of the very specialized athletes make much more sense if many people are encouraged to exercise as well. It is fun and the spirit of the Olympic Games should encourage more people to stay fit. Just a little bit at times helps to improve your health. Daily exercise is a challenge but even more beneficial. The idea of a relay is also stimulating continuity.
Credit donations
“credit” stems from the original latin word “cedere”. In the 1st person you write “credo”, which means I believe. If said in a religious building or church you show with this pronunciation that you believe tbe narrative of the religious community. In the 3rd person “credit” stand for s/he/it believes. In the financial sense it is the receiver of money from your credit card who believes or trusts you that you made an honest payment. Now, banks take commissions from each of these exchanges of trust. You are credit worthy or not. In some churches you now make donations using your credit card to facilitate business. Credit card companies also charge you on your donation. Win win situation we call this. I keep asking myself, whether I still “believe in angles” or only business angles. (Image Église Notre Dame des Victoires Brussels 2024-7)
Sport Fashion
Sport is fashion and fashion is sport. Not only in the Euro 2024 the teams make a big fuzz about the design of their sportswear, but certainly the Olympic games in Paris 2024 will demonstrate the close links between the 2 worlds. We might say playing football is a bit like a fashion catwalk. Keep going right on target, despite obstacles, when thousands of people are watching your performance and potential failures very closely. Making a “bella figura” is a must in both spheres. There is also a strong tendency for “the winner takes all”, that s/he takes the trophy and the jackpot.
Both worlds are also big business in their own right. It is at least 100 years old that sport and fashion got married. The “Musée des arts décoratifs” in Paris had an excellent exhibition on the combination of sport and fashion (booklet link). According to the curators both spheres have always been interlaced. High-level performance and specialized fashion just made for a splendid combination. As the rich and wealthy had more than a penny or two to spend on their leisure activities the combination of sport and fashion soon became itself a big business, beside the visible beauty of the bodies, movements and dresses. Just watch the breakdance fashion as the latest addition to the repertoire of olympic disciplines. In a recent article in “Le Monde” (2024-7-11) the value of the market of sports including its fashionable merchandising is estimated to reach a turnover of € 500 billion in 2022.
The competition of sports has been turned into a competition of the best images and videos. Fashionable as well as functional clothing can assist in climbing the podium. In the Euro 2024 Football Final the teams equipped with Adidas (Spain) and with Nike (England) compete for the trophy. Changing equipment sponsorship from one to the other can raise substantial amounts for a team (€ 100 million/year for the German national team). Big business seems to take over sports and fashion after the century-old marriage of sport and fashion. Since then, they have jointly been on an extended honeymoon. (Image from www.emptyspacetm.com 2024-7)
Beggar thy neighbour
Modern economics has developed the concept of so-called external effects. The oldest version of it might also be referred to as “beggar thy neighbour”, as it was coined by Adam Smith the founder of classical economics. This describes an economic policy which does not care to make your neighbours worse off by enriching yourself. Applied to environmental economics or to regions, cantons or neighboring countries, this means a ruthless pursuing of investments, which are known to shuffle a large part of the costs onto other regions through damages, might be pursued nevertheless. This might be a valid hypothesis to test how the investment in skiing at high altitudes, increases the risks of flooding at the lower altitudes of rivers or valleys. There is scope for a redistribution of wealth from one region to another. The poor neighbor, however, is in a rather weak position to claim compensation as the link between the 2 events is hard to establish scientifically and mediated by an abstract form of overall climate change. The recent example from Switzerland adds to an increasing number of natural disasters, which are in fact man-made following a beggar thy neighbor rationale. (Image newspaper reading room in Stabi Berlin with NZZ from 2024-6-24).
