Missoula Contributes Strongly to Gross National Happiness

By Sutton R. Stokes, 10-31-09

Talking to a new acquaintance the other day, I noticed that we were running through a getting-to-know-you script that is pretty common around these parts: where you’re from, how you ended up in Missoula, and—most importantly—how you’re managing to make a living.

“I’m always curious about how other people make ends meet here,” he said. “Sometimes it seems like Missoula is this big black hole of over-educated, underpaid people, not exactly making the biggest contribution we can to the economy.”

The over-educated, underpaid part is definitely true. Just go into the local bakeries and coffee shops and ask all the employees with master’s degrees to raise their hands. As for the black hole, I’m reminded of a story that I heard from someone who graduated from the University of Montana a few years back. Last spring, he traveled to his sister’s graduation in another state.

“At first, I couldn’t put my finger on what was different from my graduation,” he told me. “Then I realized it was all the people crying and hugging each other goodbye, because as soon as they got their diplomas they would be headed off all over the world and might not see each other again. At my graduation, there was a lot less crying, because so many people were putting off leaving so that they could get in another season or two of elk hunting or back-country skiing.”

I’m no elk hunter—at least not yet—and most of my skiing takes place just outside town on the groomed trails at Pattee Canyon, but I can attest to Missoula’s ability to get its hooks into you. Before moving here in 2007, I had never given much thought to living anywhere but Baltimore or a city like it. Two years later, I don’t ever want to leave, especially not after the recent birth of my son. I’ve never lived anywhere that seemed a better place to raise kids.

By my new friend’s logic, if we did leave, we’d have the opportunity to contribute more to the economy. Back on one of the coasts, we could most likely earn more money, most likely buy more stuff.

And what good Americans we’d be then, because those purchases would in fact help to improve “the economy,” at least as we usually define this vague term: gross domestic product (GDP), or “the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year.”

But who cares? As Megan McArdle points out in a recent Atlantic article, GDP may be a great measure of production, but it can’t tell us a thing about well-being. “[GDP] counts the dollar value of our output,” McArdle explains, “but not the actual improvement in our lives, or even in our economic condition.”

Consider a newly built house, says McArdle. All of the production and work that went into it—lumber, roofing tiles, glass, insulation, contractors—contributes to the GDP, no matter if the owner of that house has since gotten upside down, no matter if it now “sits empty in an exurban cul-de-sac… while bankers, borrowers, and regulators squabble… and its only function is to bankrupt its owner.”

Or consider the many voluntary stay-at-home moms who are being pressed back into the work force by these straitened times. Though the money these moms are spending on transportation, clothing, and childcare will also contribute to the GDP, McArdle continues, “each woman who leaves for the office out of economic necessity represents a loss to the country, a loss of what economists call utility and what we may think of as net national happiness.”

Looking at it this way, I’m proud of how relatively little I contribute to “the economy.” Sure, I’m driving an eleven-year-old car, carefully planning my first new-shoe purchase in five years, and squinting at a non-digital, non-HD television, but it’s hard to imagine how I could be much happier.

A lot of the credit goes to just living in Missoula, and I’m not alone in feeling this way. A recent survey found 94 percent of Missoulians “satisfied with the overall quality of life” here. Even among these sunny folks, I’m an outlier, because 64 percent of them said they were unhappy with traffic congestion here, and the relative ease of getting around this town compared to the Baltimore area is something Amy and I still marvel at, two years into our Missoula residency.

Unless you mainly watch Fox News, which is apparently more interested in panting about ACORN than in reporting actual news, you probably heard that U.S. GDP grew 3.5 percent in the third quarter of this year.

It’s good to hear that some of us are doing their part, stepping up and taking on some additional credit card payments for the team.

As for me, though, I’m happy to give in to the overpowering gravitational forces of a happy, satisfied life here in Missoula, no matter how little I’m doing to help grow the nation’s bottom line.

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