I dunno, I think that gold car would make me happy.

I would like to take this opportunity to chatfilter and wish you good luck in getting a writing job. I hope there are some Metafilter comments in there, because that's some pretty high-caliber and *persuasive* self-edited writing. Your voice would be effective, and you would be effective, in any organisation you choose to work for, I think.

On a related note, is anybody else using non-anonymous internets forum writing in CVs and portfolios?

Boy, I think small. When I saw the title of the post I immediately thought: "They're wrong. That whole 1/2 lb. bag of M&Ms will too make me feel happy!" urp.

Having a professional photoshop all of my photos might make me happy too

Well according to surveys, Nigerians are happier with their lives than the people of any other country.

Must be all that spam money.


*ahem*

No, none of those things will make you happy forever, but then again nothing will. They will however make you happy for a while, which is all anybody's happy for anyway. The people who say that sex/fame/money/power don't matter are either people trying to console themselves because they don't have any, or people who want to keep it all for themselves.

Wait, what will make me happy then?

The fact that fame is #5 is something I find kinda entertaining. (Not gonna lie, sometimes I wish I could be famous. And then I remember that it's hard for me to even leave the house now.)

Money doesn't make you happy, but at least you can be miserable in luxury and not worry about paying the phone bill.

Spam money? I think it's all that highlife and Afrobeat music!

Here, listen to this: Segun Bucknor - That's the Time

Yeesh, fame would be a nightmare! I get enough blowback over my choices (and enough opportunities to practice my "Why would this be your business?" face) just as private little ole me. I can't imagine how awful it would be to be Famous Elsa.

One thing that I think would ake me happy and it actually would make me happy: if my M key would stop sticking. Arrrrrgh.

Yeah, I agree with Jan. To me, money doesn't quite fit with the others. The others are more about ego, and money is more material. What do people do with too much money? They very often try to get those other things (except genius... but they can pay people to act like they're brilliant!), in which case money is really only the access road to the ego gratification stuff.

But being evicted or losing your house because something goes bad and you can't make payments... or spending a lot of time worrying that this might happen is miserable. And money can keep that misery away. Money gives you access to good health care, healthier foods. Money allows you to provide for your children in the way you want... or even have children. We didn't have kids because our financial situation was so unstable at the time we should have been getting busy with that. Would kids have made us happier? Maybe.

Anyway, I don't need to enumerate the ways that poverty can make life miserable. Money can't make you a happy person, but it can definitely buffer you from a lot of misery.

So. I'll take it. Show me the money.

I just read a book on Happiness by the first author mentioned in this link from the article. Pretty interesting. Studies showing we expect to react more negatively to disasters than we do, have a huge capacity for spin, etc.

One example - how many people left at the altar, after a few months path, still say "That was the worst thing that ever happened to me?" Most say it was the best, of course. Self preservation. If people imagine it before, they say they would never recover, or see it in a positive light.

Stuff like that.

Not a real compelling read, sort of all over the place, but interesting.

We don't need more money. We need fewer bills.
Maybe that's why Nigerians report being happier.

The studies I've read about that deal with money and happiness tend toward the idea that there is a *baseline* amount of money that's required for happiness -- basically, staying out of poverty and having material needs met -- but that happiness does not increase much with more money after that.

So, being middle-class will make you happier than being poor, but being rich will not make you happier than being middle-class, basically.

All you need is love.

-the Beatles

You know what makes me happy? This picture.≡ Click to see image ≡

So maybe Cuteoverload is the key to happiness?

I believe it was A.J. Liebling who said, approximately, "Once when I asked my uncle if I could borrow from him, he said that money couldn't buy happiness. Later, when I watched him react to a horse he had bet on winning its race, I knew he had been lying."

the porcupine eating the banana made me happy.

honestly, i can live without excess fame, excess beauty, excess power... but i would like a bit more money. i know that owning my own house and raising chickens and children will now make me happy...

that and you know, unlimited travel and korean soap operas.

If we won the lottery, most of us would show up to the office the next day wearing an ankle-length fur coat and enough bling to make Mr. T look Amish, and only stay just long enough to take a dump in our boss's inbox.

Wow. How did this cracked.com writer figure out my plans?

It's eerie, man.

Yes, what occhiblu said. A baseline amount of money removes causes of stress, and that allows you freedom from the stress _and_ time to concentrate on other things that do produce happiness. Based on the totally anecdotal and biased observation of people I know, who range from definitely poor to ridiculously top 1% wealthy, there is not much correlation between having the great wealth and personal happiness. Most of the very happiest people I know are not in the wealthy set. Some are happy even though they are poor because they are content to live within their means and have enough to cover their needs; others are middle class and happy because they have learned about the things that actually do increase happiness and they're good about doing them.

The people who are most hampered by lack of money are those who are low-income and have people to support (kids, sick parents, deadbeat spouses) and few assets (crappy transportation, crappy house, no health insurance). Those challenges get in the way of happiness in a big way. Beyond that, though, when it comes to feelings of contentment and joy in daily life, the people making $30-50K a year look to be just as happy as those making $250K and up.

Sometimes it's those people in between those zones who seem pretty unhappy -- like, households in the $100-200K range, with kids in the family -- I suspect because they work too hard for that money (maybe commuting) leaving little personal time, they overspend, carry too much debt, and take on massive expenses like footing the whole bill for kids' college or paying parents' home health care. In that case it's 'not enough money' but in a different way than when you have no resources at all. They haven't got the means to do everything they want to, but try to anyway. So that can be unhappy-making, despite the fact that they appear to be making a lot of money.

And then there are the ennui-filled and disaffected rich, of whom I meet plenty in my line of work, and then there are the hyperstressed type A rich, of whom I meet a few. "Happy" doesn't map well onto those populations either.

I can think of a lot of things I would do with more money that I would enjoy. But I don't think that means I can't be happy today. One thing I need to be happy, though, is to feel like I'm making progress - like, that I can have hope, and there is a reasonable possibility of achieving my dreams and goals if I try. Sometimes money is connected to that - for instance, I would like to own a home, and need more money for that. But if I died tomorrow and never got to own the home, I couldn't say I was unhappy today. The fact that I don't have that stuff yet isn't a cause of unhappiness. Knowing as a certainty that I could never ever have it might be, but then I guess I'd have to be starting down some other path in life that would take that into account, and maybe I'd be able to create some other reachable goals that would take the place of that, and produce happiness. I don't know. But I don't think one has to have a lot of disposable income to be happy. It can help - but not if you don't already know how to be happy.

This is really Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. When your basic needs (shelter, food, etc) are met, you then start worrying about the next level (security, family, etc.) and so on.

Sort of, except there's a really specific dividing line, for me, between 'stresses due to dearth of money' and 'lack of stresses due to dearth of money.' I like Maslow's construction but I don't think people really live by Maslow -- we pursue all our needs at once. It's not like, if you're poor, you disregard your spiritual life or your love life.

We did an article on happiness last year at work.

Thanks, js. Let me quote a bit of that article:

Women with partners and children with a household income of over $150,000 are also in the highest category of wellbeing.
...
However happiness doesn't increase with money…The survey found that money loses its ability to reliably raise wellbeing beyond a household income of $100,000 - $150,000.

Those are pretty healthy incomes, even in AU dollars. I'd be pretty happy with that, too.

Those with the lowest wellbeing or the saddest are unemployed men with a household income of under $15,000.

Confirmed.

Huh. I haven't seen any cracked articles that were that thoughtful or well-researched. Cool! Thanks for sharing.

It's a pretty obvious article, but OK for that.

Although - I'm now obsessed with composing a list of thinks that shouldn't make you happy but do. On my list - Snark, other people's misfortune, violent movies, chocolate and being a fan of obscure bands.

1. Having a good relationship with my dad, but he's sort of old school, so I don't know.

2. Same thing goes for my mom, but I love them both too much.

3. Living here in India for the rest of my life, even if I get a chance to relocate...

4. Buying a new house, but the neighbours should be good.

5. Making the perfect post on Mefi, but still not satisfied with the result.

You should write that list and post it, seanyboy.

Something I heard on Marketplace today after chatting about this here:

DALTON CONLEY: Well, a couple of big socio-demographic changes have occurred since the 60s. First is rising economic inequality. Every year since 1969 economic inequality has risen in the United States and has particularly been concentrated in the top half. In fact, the higher up you go, the more inequality has risen and the gaps get bigger. And I think this causes what I call an economic redshift, no matter where you are on the top half, it looks like everybody is rushing away from you.

RYSSDAL: That's insane. I mean, on the face of it, that's nuts, right?

CONLEY: It's a brave new world. For the first time, it was people with incomes over $200,000, in a New York Times poll, that said that they feel poorer when they're around rich people as compared to people who are actually poor. That's stunning to me. And for the first time in labor history, the further up the income ladder you go, the more hours you work.