What interpretation of human flourishing, what ideas of value does capitalism in practice embody and promote? To address this question the paper clarifies first that ‘capitalism’ must be understood as more than merely a system of private property and markets. It contains ‘the prerogative...

The concepts of well-being and quality of life concern evaluative judgements. There is insufficient understanding in current literature that these judgements are made variously due to not only use of differing values and differing research instruments but also differing standpoints, differing...

Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country’s living...

Systematic, large discrepancies exist between direct measures of well-being and the measures that economists largely concentrate on, notably income. The paper assesses and rejects claims that income is satisfactorily correlated with well-being, and addresses the implications of discrepancies...