There is no Office of Happiness in the federal government. No cabinet position devoted to joy. No department measuring whether people can still afford to feel good. This absence is both leadership oversight and philosophical blindness.
We are told the economy is strong when GDP rises. We measure productivity but not fulfillment. We track inflation but not the rising cost of a life worth living. Consider what has happened: Three in ten Americans now feel lonely weekly; one in ten every single day. Before the pandemic, half of US adults already reported measurable loneliness. What does it mean when isolation becomes the modal American experience?
The data, the epidemiological figures, reveals something we sense but haven’t named; happiness has been quietly enclosed. What was once common—gathering, affordable leisure, time for play—now requires a ticket most cannot afford. The activities that most improve subjective wellbeing are participation in arts, sports, and cultural tourism are precisely the experiences being priced out of reach. This is not about luxury but the infrastructure of human flourishing.
Per Gallup’s research, happiness depends on trust, connection, and the sense that people have your back. Yet we have built systems that fracture trust, commodify connection, and tell people they are on their own. The medical consequences are devastating… increased cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, and suicide are all linked to loneliness. We treat these as individual health failures when they are the predictable outcome of decisions that never considered joy a legitimate concern.
Imagine if happiness had a seat at the table. If urban planning asked not just about traffic flow but about whether neighborhoods foster connection. If economic policy measured not just employment but whether people can afford the leisure that makes life bearable. If healthcare addressed not just disease but the social isolation that creates it. The resistance to this thinking is instructive. We are comfortable discussing economic growth, national security, infrastructure spending. But happiness? That sounds soft. Unserious. A luxury for after the “real” problems are solved. But the real problems are happiness problems. America has fallen from 11th to 24th in global happiness rankings among developed nations. Loneliness has reached epidemic proportions. The absence of joy is manifesting as addiction, polarization, health collapse, and civic disintegration.
No leader has established an Office of Happiness because we have not yet accepted that happiness is infrastructure. That joy is not peripheral decoration but foundation. That a nation where people cannot afford to feel good will eventually not be able to afford anything else. How much longer can we afford not to care about societal happiness?