Author's Keywords: happiness, work, Rawls, hedonic psychology, work sharing, workplace democracy	Convention Need a solution for abstract management? All Academic can help! Contact us today to find out how our system can help your annual meeting. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
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Gorton, Bill. "Happiness and Employment: A Rawlsian Justification for the Right to Work" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 27, 2003 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p63602_index.html>

Gorton, B. , 2003-08-27 "Happiness and Employment: A Rawlsian Justification for the Right to Work" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p63602_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: Liberal governments are rightly concerned with the happiness of their citizenry. Utilitarianism, however, is widely regarded as providing a flawed philosophical underpinning for liberalism because in the end it cannot defend individual rights. John Rawls�s theory of justice is attractive because it combines a philosophically robust defense of individual rights with justification of a society aimed at maximizing individuals� happiness, understood as achievement of a rational life plan. But Rawls�s conception of happiness is too narrow. A happy life includes the subjective feeling of happiness as well as accomplishment of important goals. Also flawed is Rawls�s assumption that income is among the primary goods that are instrumental for pursuing widely varying life plans. Hedonic psychologists have shown that increases in income have little effect on subjective happiness once a fairly minimal level of material prosperity is attained. A better candidate for a primary good is employment. Work is a key source of self-esteem, which Rawls himself identifies as the most important primary good. Further, work can serve as a vehicle for self-realization and social interaction, both of which are strongly correlated with subjective happiness and are likely to be part of any rational life plan. I conclude by suggesting that work sharing and workplace democracy are two promising � though by no means perfect � approaches for increasing employment and opportunities for self-realization through work. Such reforms might reduce productivity, but the gain in happiness would make the reduction acceptable.

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