Exactly. This is a classic case of a confounding variable. The happiest nations are also the richest ones. The richest ones have lower growth than developing nations precisely because they are the richest: developing nations can achieve growth by increasing their literacy rates, building infrastructure, and making other capital expenditures (e.g. farming equipment, high-tech machines for factories). The richest ones already have all of that, so their growth needs to come from elsewhere.

In economics terms:

Y = f(A, K, L).

That is, GDP is a function of Capital (K), Labor (L), and a catch-all of technology (A).

Developing countries can ramp up any of these 3 easily, especially technology "A" by transfering/adopting technologies that exist elsewhere. The richest countries can't do that since they should be at the forefront of technology.

The attribution of the Solow Residual to "technology" is grossly misplaced and very poorly founded.

Roughly 98% can be attributed by primary energy consumption. A fact mainstream economists seem to be at pains to deny.

R.U. Ayres, Charles A.S. Hall, and numerous others have repeatedly derived this relationship, and with a pretty consistent value.

That's because a lot of technology is coming up with new ways of using energy to do useful things. See: light bulb, internal combustion engine, etc. And a lot of technology is new methods that reduce the cost of building these energy-consuming devices allowing us to produce more of then for cheaper (and more of them then consumer more energy).

I feel like you are trying to say "no, it's just consuming more energy. It's not 'technology'". But I think you've missed the point. We can't just dump more coal and oil onto a field and burn it and expect that energy to increase production. We need "technology" to turn it into something useful.

Sure, but:

1. Those new ways of using energy themselves are highly dependent on energy-intensive factors as inputs. Steel, aluminium, copper, electronics, reliable power inputs, control systems, etc., are all the products of high-energy outputs.

When you realise that the Watt steam engine revolutionised manufacturing based providing a net total of 500 prime movers of about 10 HP each net power output, you start to recognise just how energy-contrained economic activity was.

2. The Solow Residual is, quite literally, just that. It's a statistical residual. Solow himself describes it as "the measure of our ignorance". Again: there is no basis to attribute it to "technology". Other than it forms an economically convenient theory.

3. The research I've mentioned is far more specific -- rather than just run a regression of capital vs. labour and handwave a declaration that All That Is Unexplained Shall Be Termed "Technology", it specifically considers the role of other factors, including energy. And, again: shows that that accounts for up to 98% of the residual -- an insanely high fit.

So long as we're talking factors of production, I've just learned, reading of and from Alexander Hamilton Church, who more-or-less invented cost accounting, that through about 1900, only labour was considered as a factor of production.

Somewhat amusingly, his discussion of factors other than labour focuses, almost exclusively, on the ability to supply mechanical power through engines. Go figure. 1910.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church

https://archive.org/stream/productionfacto00churgoog#page/n1...

Happy people don't focus on earning more money for exactly the same reason - they already have enough to not worry about their base needs.

The thing is that grown up countries still focus on employment to distribute wealth, and to get that employment they need to grow.

So we are consuming useless things to keep useless jobs and maintain a growth that doesn't make us more happy.