He’s a happiness researcher at the Georg-Simon-Ohm Hochschule, a University of Applied Arts in Nuremberg.DW-TV: We've pulled in an expert. Karl- Heinz Ruckriegel. He's an economics professor and a happiness researcher at the University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg.  Mr. Ruckriegel, my mother has always said that you can't buy happiness. Are you here to debunk motherly wisdom? Karlheinz Ruckriegel: She was totally true in that what she said. If we take into consideration the research work that we have done during the past 50 years or so, then we can see on the one hand an increase in the GDP per capita quite dramatically in the western countries, but on the other hand we cannot see an increase in the question of being satisfied with life. DW-TV: Why do you think, though, that economics needs to worry about happiness? Economics is a science. Karlheinz Ruckriegel: I don't think that economics needs to worry because happiness is part of economics thinking. Because the decisive point in this case is that first we have to ask the question what is decisive in our life? And if we go back to Aristotle, he said the decisive point is that we try to reach happiness in our life. So the next point is...if this is our aim, then what can we do to reach this aim. And this is an economic question. DW-TV: That's the point isn't it. Everybody wants to reach happiness, but most people can't be happy if they are having to worry about having a job and making money, and in this crisis we are going through a lot of people are finding they are without work, or they're losing their homes. They are going to laugh at us if we tell them they should be out looking for happiness. Karlheinz Ruckriegel: We have a different situation between here in Germany on the one hand and maybe in the United States on the other. In Germany if you look at figure we have of unemployed people, we have only seen a small increase up to now. And the point is on the one hand, this is clea...