The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [71]
People with money want more money. Does that mean the money we already have doesn’t work, so we always think we need more? Or that the money we already have is working great, so, of course, we want more? We know that people want more. The standard way of judging the well-being of a nation is its GDP, or gross domestic product—the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year. That of the United States is high, of course. Yet a recent survey showed that less than half of the population could agree that they have enough money to lead the kind of lives they want to.2 Another study asked whether people would like more money, and an overwhelming majority said yes. We keep associating more money with more happiness even though research studies and popular wisdom (from inspirational posters to clichés of philosophy class) keep telling us that money does not bring happiness. Is there something wrong with the thinking of everyone who has money but wants more, or is there something wrong with the research studies and the popular wisdom? Both. Our searching after money is in part animated by a fallacy that the powerful and lasting happiness created when money lifts us from poverty can be repeated as money lifts us yet higher. But money still occasions a lot of opportunities for short-term happiness and for an overall sense of life’s drama and progress. The research studies mostly back up the popular wisdom, and the popular wisdom is substantially wrong. By contrast, the uncommon wisdom of most great philosophers includes a respectful valuation of money. Furthermore, nowadays money serves to replace a lot that money stole. In important ways, the idea that money cannot, today, buy happiness is a remarkable myth. Of course money doesn’t always bring happiness, but it has the capacity to bring some. People are sometimes naive about how tricky it is to get the good out of money, but that doesn’t mean they are wrong to suppose that there is some good to be gotten out of it.
There is a clear correlation between abject poverty and unhappiness. When an increase in money means the difference between uncertain and unpleasant food and shelter on the one hand and stable and decent food and shelter on the other, the conclusion that money brings happiness is inarguable. After this first jump, though—from hungry and cold to full bellied and warm—the story of money is a story of sharply diminishing returns. Food, housing, and possessions that become nicer and nicer add to our happiness less and less. What I call the abundance inference is the mistake of thinking that first step out of penury is representative of further advances. The inference seems supported because all of us, poor or rich, get a burst of joy upon achieving or receiving a new delight—scientists these days talk about it as a strong dopamine surge. Research has shown that the effect of rising out of poverty is lasting: five and even ten years later you still self-report more happiness than you did when you were without basic resources.
Why do people report themselves to be as happy as they were back when we all had less? Well, for one thing, we are comparing two societies that are both majestically wealthy in comparison to almost all societies throughout history. Neither the surveyed Americans of the 1950s nor those of the 2000s were struggling with endemic distress—hunger, pain, humiliation. And average people who are not in such distress are statistically more likely to call themselves happy than not. Whatever happy means to us, we have set it to correspond with our normal state. But happiness, in