This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 8th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown. Employment in the sense of self-direction that comes with it may still

be underappreciated as welfare reform measures are considered.

Lisa Conyers is co-author of the human cost of welfare, how the system hurts the people

it's supposed to help.

She spoke at the Cato Institute in March.

The philosophy behind the book is that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness, but most especially what we're interested in is the pursuit of happiness.

And the idea is that, or what we wanted to look at is if we have the right to pursue happiness, what does that mean?

What does it mean to be happy? What does it take for all of us to be happy?

And then, once we decide on that, what does the welfare system have to do with that?

Will it help us be happier or will it not help us be happier?

Is it helping the people who are on it lead satisfying lives and pursue happiness or not?

So that's the question that we wanted to answer with this

book. So as far as happiness goes, we aren't the first people to come up with the

idea that what we do for a living is really essential to human

happiness, what we do to self actualize, what we do to get that earned success that

Arthur Brooks talks about. And scholars from Aristotle to Socrates and on have all talked about happiness.

And they all look at this kind of like, what is it?

What do we need?

And we all know, I mean, if I were to ask you,

probably the first question I would ask you is what do you do right

...