Posted on 01/26/2005 1:27:05 PM PST by Lazamataz
The economy has been giving off mixed signals for months. It might be time to tune into an entirely different frequency.
A growing body of research on the “economics of happiness” proposes that material wealth is overrated.
These controversial researchers do not say economic growth is undesirable, and they note that unemployed people are almost always unhappy.
But they say policy-makers should pay more attention to what people say about their satisfaction with life as they consider how far to go in the pursuit of unbridled growth.
“The problem we have found is that as (gross domestic product) has gone up, happiness doesn’t go up with it,” said David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College.
One study by Blanchflower and an associate, based on interviews of 100,000 people over three decades, concludes that despite sharp improvements in living standards “the USA has, in aggregate, apparently become more miserable over the last quarter of a century.”
A critical factor in personal happiness appears to be marriage — or at least a monogamous sexual relationship. A widowed or divorced person would have to make an extra $100,000 a year to be as happy as a comparable married person, Blanchflower and co-author Andrew Oswald estimated.
Blanchflower and Oswald also looked at surveys of sexual activity and found that in general, “The more sex, the happier the person.”
“People who have no sexual activity are noticeably less happy than average,” they declared.
Such research may seem far outside the realm of economics but is gaining wide recognition. In 2002 the Nobel prize in economics was shared by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman for work that has inspired the field of behavioral economics.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Bill Gates doesn't seem like an unhappy person.
I wouldn't mind being well off and sorta moody.
I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas,
I've got forty thousand french francs in my fridge.
I've got lost of lovely lire,
Now the Deutschemark's getting dearer,
And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Chorus: There is nothing quite as wonderful as money,
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.
Some people say it's folly,
But I'd rather have the lolly,
With money you can ma-ake a splash.
Finale: There is nothing quite wonderful as money,
(money,money,money,money)
There is nothing like a newly minted pound,
(money,money,money,money)
All: Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker,
It's accountancy that makes the world go round.
(round,round,round)
You can keep your Marxist ways
For it's only just a phase.
For it's money money money makes the world go round.
(money,money,money,money
money,money,money,money
moneeeeeeeeeeeyyyy)
It is better to be rich and healthy than to be sick and poor.
There was a day when I simply rejected 'things' and suddenly I became content, serene.
Not that you CAN'T be happy with the 'stuff', but it seriously does seem to interfere a little bit. I'm finding myself losing my gratitude and losing my serenity lately, so I did the only thing I know what to do.
I made my bed.
Yep, this little act -- something I stopped doing for the last two weeks -- set the tone for everything. See, if I don't make my bed, then I don't get down on my knees and pray in the morning. I don't read my Torah or my Bible (yes, I read both). I don't read my Daily Inspiration from the Just For Today book. I don't read the Basic Text. I forget to be grateful for my incredible bounty.
All from not making my bed.
So, for me: To truly be happy, I must make my bed.
Everywhere.
It may be better to be rich and healthy than to be sick and poor.... but it is best to be.
Every day I fight the "stuff" urge. Having a daughter brought me down to my roots. I can be happy with where I am, and no so worried about the past or the future.
Sounds like you "get it". :o) Glad for you. I'm trying to reachieve "it", having slipped out of my spirituality lately. This article fit me perfectly, today.
One should be wary of excessive spirituality: blood level above 86 proof is definitely unhealthy. Happiness measurement unit could indeed be a dollar, but only in a rather narrowly restricted poverty range. And poverty sucks.
The hard part is to "remember it". That's where I struggle.
If that is the case...then Bubba Clinton should be the happiest person on earth
Hooker- "What's it like to have all that money?"
Arthur- "All I can say is, 'I wish I had a dime for every dime I have'".
Arthur- "You ever been on a yatch?"
Linda- "No, is it great?"
Arthur- "I doesn't suck."
I = it.
mumble....
Coincidentally I read one of Prof. Blanchflower's recent studies (probably the one referred to) just the other day and am surprised that the researchers and the journalist put this interpretation on it. Other things equal, more money is in the study associated with more happiness, in that richer people in the US and Britain are happier than those with less money, other things equal. Other work has shown that people in rich countries tend to be happier than people in poor ones, again other things equal.
The reason that happiness in the US has stagnated by their measure is not because "happiness doesn't go up with [GDP]," but because even as income has gone up so has marriage gone down. So the latter effect has pushed happiness down even as rising incomes have partly pushed it back up again. GDP effects are offsetting the negative effects of changes in household structure. Now if you could show that the same behavior that causes income to go up also causes marriages to decline you could posit that growth harms happiness. But I know these authors don't show that.
FWIW, if you judge people by what they say rather than what they do, income measures have long been shown to be a strong correlate of immigration decisions after taking into account other effects such as political freedom. When making the major decision of whether to uproot their lives and move somewhere far away people behave as if more income is important to a better life.
Finally, a disturbing implication of their research (and that of others) is that people are happier ceteris paribus when income distributions are more uniform. Some people use this as an argument for Euro-style welfare states (even though those states, partly as a consequence of these policies, have less income and more unemployment). If we take income away from that rich guy over there and give it to the rest of us gross happiness has probably gone up, but that doesn't make it just. So utilitarianism has its perils.
I've got a full belly, clothes on my back and a warm place to sleep. Everything else is extra.
Lots of sex makes me happt.
Paying lots of money for lots of sex does not make me happy.
Misery loves company?
I've known wealthy people who are horribly miserable, and I've known very unwealthy people who are blessedly happy. That's proof enough for me that money is not the key to happiness. Money can, however, make you pretty unhappy if you let it.
Probably the median income is the optimum -- not the least or the most, which the discussions always seem to argue for.
However, with that same median income, one's standard and quality of life can be drastically different from one person to the next -- depending on all the other skills and resources a person has. Then, one realizes what his real worth actually is -- everything else being equal.
Of course everybody needs some money -- but he doesn't have to have the singular objective of being the richest man buried at that cementery to make him happy, like a Warren Buffett.
A lot of people have been given the misinformation that the goal in life for everybody is to become the richest or most powerful person in the world, and if they are not, they blame whomever they think is. No, the goal of every life is to be the greatest person each person can be -- given who he is. The envy, resentment, criticism, demands, self-promotion is all very unbecoming and indicative of one poor in spirit, and that handicap, is a disability.
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