The next time you’re struggling to find the right birthday present for a friend or family member, why don’t you just give the
New Economics Foundation a call? Remarkably, these people seem to know the tastes and preferences of 60 million UK inhabitants. Not our old-fashioned “revealed preferences”, the preferences we express through the choices we make every day, but our true preferences, which we are apparently so often confused about ourselves. They know, for example, that deep down inside, we are all unhappy: