i completely disagree- money can in fact buy happiness. if you are loaded, then you have the luxury to pursue the things that make you happy. whether that is fishing, raising a healthy family, drinking on a beach in mexico, etc.
I agree to a point... money can buy you freedom to pursue happiness, but just earning more and more will not make you happier.
and another thing...happiness can't buy groceries or pay the rent...
...but if you are happy without buying groceries/paying rent what is the reason for doing so?
a main source of my stress right now is tryign to buy a new home. if i were wealthy- that stress would be gone.
Stress is IMO very much up to the person. If you are the kind of person that gets stressed buying a new home, chances are if you were wealthy you'd be stressed about something else... such as your investments/your employees (if you own a company...) etc... Here it might be argued that money would actually bring stress because when you have a lot you have a big responsibility and you have a lot to lose.
If you are relaxed by nature you won't be stressed from buying a new house or having financial difficulties. In that sense someone living in a cardboard box might be happier than the CEO of some large company...
another way to show money can buy happiness. sociology studies show that people who work out, eat well, and are healthier are more prone to be happy. if you are rich, you have the luxury of working out when you want to, you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and can buy quality meats.
You have a point here, but you don't really need to have excessive amounts of money to be able to work out or eat fruits and vegetables.
so, yes, money can buy happiness...but happiness is not gauranteed to either the poor or the rich. if you're a miserable SOB, then you'll always be one no matter how much money youhave.
Agreed
But if your happy with a big house and a good car, money will help you quite alot.
I disagree. I don't think a car or a big house will make you happy. You will feel the initial joy of having the new car/house for about a week, and after that you will feel that what you have is the norm, and it won't make you feel happy anymore. The only way to keep happy is if you get bigger and bigger houses and better and better cars. Constantly. That is, obviously not possible.
The way you feel is dependant on the
change of social standing. If some relatively wealthy guy has financial difficulties and has to sell his BMW and buy a VW instead, he will feel a lot more miserable than the guy with a used volvo who just saved enough money to buy himself a brand new VW, even though at the end they both own the same car because one person experiences positive change and the other negative.
My opinion is, the more money you have the more options and choices you have, and that will probably make you more happy.
Not necessarily. Just getting a bigger paycheck at the end of the month does not give you freedom. It only gives you the power to purchase more goods. Which won't by themselves make you feel good.
1. Happiness is correlated to wealth at a national level, ie when you look countries with various average income and compare wealthy countries like Japan, USA and Switzerland and compare these to poor countries like China, Nigeria or Romania.
I'm not sure how that conclusion is reached... Suicide levels in Scandinavia the highest in the word, while Scandinavian countries are ones of the wealthiest in the world. There was a study several months ago showing that Norway was the country with the highest standard of living in the world IIRC.
Last time I visited Italy, if I were to judge by the way Italians walked, talked, were dressed I would say that Italians were much happier than Danes while not wealthier..
2. Happiness has a low correlation to income within nations, instead there is a cut-off where those who have a very low income (for the UK I think the cut-off was <£10000/annual income for a household) are less happy, but those who have average or high income are not happy according to how much money they have. On the contrary, some studies actually show increasing unhappiness with increasing income.
This is interesting, but I kept wondering: how do they measure and test happiness? I'm not trying to discredit what you're saying, but I'm curious
3. Economic growth in more developed countries, has not been accompanied with increasing happiness.
This actually makes quite a lot of sense to me, since economic growth usually results in change of the way people live, and change even if for the good usually upsets people...
Looking at change factors, there are some studies showing that people with very low income become happier when they get a better income. Also, people get more unhappy if their income is severely decreased.
This supports my idea that it's not the physical wealth that determines happiness but the change in wealth that would plunge you into depression or elation
To conclude, I agree with pretty much everything CE has said except for her first point (i.e. that there is a correleation between happiness and wealth on a national level), and agree with some points other memebers have. Now I'll leave you with a new question. In the glory of SYM I would have opened a new thread for the new question, but now I doubt there'll be enough responses to keep both threads alive so I'll just post here. Consider this:
Can money buy you happiness? To a certain extent up to the level of fulfillinging basic needs such as housing, food, medical care and personal safetly - yes. Above that basic survival level - no.
Basic needs such as shelter and food have been fulfilled for humans ages and ages ago. In this case is the average human today happier than he was 1000 years ago? 3000 years ago? What makes him so? While obtaining food and shelter might have been more of a problem back then you always had the satisfaction of a successful hunt, the satisfaction of finding a dry place to spend the night in, while now you don't have any big day-to-day achievements. It's rare that you go back from the office and you think to yourself "Yes, today was such a great day, I got so much done, I feel good", because, well let's face it life can be pretty monotonous. What do you think?
God, I swear, I'll never write anything this long agian. Ever.