happiness-4
Explanation
This comic satirizes the tension between economics and human well-being. An economist is asked "Why do economists only care about GDP? How about we start measuring happiness?" The economist responds that "Happiness is humming," or something similarly dismissive.
Then the economist points out that a specific nation that "has been collecting 40 centuries of records" has been keeping track of happiness and well-being -- and the key to their success involves "taking children to public executions." The other person reacts with horror, asking about the ethics of this. The economist's response turns it into a commentary on how metrics can be misleading: the nation achieves "happiness" through fear and authoritarian control, which technically registers as contentment on surveys but is obviously monstrous.
The humor operates as a critique of the "measure happiness instead of GDP" movement. While the comic doesn't defend GDP as a metric, it points out that "happiness" as a measurable quantity is far more problematic than its advocates assume. Happiness can be achieved through deeply unethical means (like totalitarian social control), making it a potentially dangerous policy target. The joke is that the economist who seems callous for focusing on GDP might actually be the more thoughtful one, having already considered and rejected the naive alternative. It's a classic SMBC move of taking a popular progressive-sounding idea and stress-testing it to an uncomfortable logical conclusion.