Perhaps, accepting the imperfections it is better to try to optimise for happiness, even if the optimisation can only be judged as to whether they're generally heading in the right direction ... perhaps if imperfect measures of happiness are improving then life improves for the many in a way that doesn't improve by measures which reflect mainly financial aspects of society.
You can make a rich person 100 times richer and overall prosperity is probably decreasing. But you can't really make someone 100x happier (especial if there already relatively happy), all that money maybe made the rich person 1.0001x happier (or even <1x). Seems like given this sort of difference in happiness and financial wealth measuring the latter has a built in aspect of relative equality. For those who care about creating societies that benefit the whole population, this is an enticing possibility.
Better to optimize for happiness? Sure, I can go there.
But the title emphasizes measuring happiness, while pointing out that our measurement of productivity is flawed. But measuring happiness/well-being is going to be far more flawed.
The case for optimizing for happiness and well-being does not depend on our being able to measure it more accurately.
You can make a rich person 100 times richer and overall prosperity is probably decreasing. But you can't really make someone 100x happier (especial if there already relatively happy), all that money maybe made the rich person 1.0001x happier (or even <1x). Seems like given this sort of difference in happiness and financial wealth measuring the latter has a built in aspect of relative equality. For those who care about creating societies that benefit the whole population, this is an enticing possibility.