Does Economic Wealth Mean Happiness? Essay

Many people have a thought in their minds that wealth is the factor that makes an individual Joyful;however,this is not a real statement.What actually makes a person happy is one’s health and love.

Can anyone be truly happy? A economist name Richard A. Easterlin once said “...Although richer people were happier than poorer people in the same country, people in weather countries were not necessarily happier than those in poorer ones.” Which means that wealth doesn’t bring people happiness, it it how people spend their lives that bring them so much happiness. When people look back at the past the ones that help others are more happier than the ones that try and help themselves.

Money and Happiness Why most of rich people are not happy with what they have? Happiness is the feeling which people feel it when they are satisfied with what they have even though these people are poor or rich. Money is the way that people use it to bring things which they can buy it by money. Sharon Begley in her article “Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness” states that sometimes there are relationship between money and happiness because people always try to spend less money when they want to buy somethings.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As you know these words come from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps one of the greatest documents ever written. However, I do have a little problem with the last four words sentence, “the pursuit of Happiness” because I believe it actually sends an easily misinterpreted message.

Attention Materials: Many times I have wondered what is true happiness. Is there such thing as true happiness? Can it even be attained if there is such a thing? Is it more of fulfilling desires, or satisfying psychological needs? Every person attempts to realize happiness in its fullest essence. It seems like today people are too busy trying to get rich. Nowadays it is believed that happiness lies in that new mansion, or a nice Ferrari. People are mistakingly assuming that wealth will bring to them a personal significance in which they will achieve happiness.

By changing the perception of all types of wealth, not just fiscal prosperity, multiple pathways to happiness become apparent. “When your

Every other Monday morning the workers of the fast food restaurant next door line up in my lobby waiting to cash their paychecks. There is a wide range of ages, races, and sexes; there is no one demographic in the lobby. The conversations are about coworkers not present or about their spouses. They complain about the long shifts or an angry customer they encountered in the drive up this morning. One young woman discusses her daughter’s adventures at kindergarten. There are complaints of the cost of car repairs or a visit to the hospital last week. There are questions of who is working tonight and what time does the bus come, all of these conversations could be happening in any bank lobby anywhere in the United States. The noise level continues to rise in the lobby as more workers enter the building, the energy in the lobby rises as the excitement of the workers increases, today is payday. Or is it anxiety? Are their thoughts, masked behind idle chit chat, of how am I going to pay rent and feed my family? How am I going to make this pay last for two weeks? These fellow humans are the full time working poor.

Happiness is something very abstract and it differs from individual to individual. I always feel that a poor man will always be thankful to the almighty even if he is provided with two square meals a day but at least he can sleep happily with no stress; on the other hand a rich man will always be unhappy throughout his life either in the pursuit of creating wealth or in the tension of safeguarding his wealth. Accumulating wealth is extremely time consuming and time once lost cannot be regained; moreover, not all have the potential and skills of earning which is always coupled with hard work and

Don Peck and Ross Douthat convey through their editorial, “Does Money Buy Happiness?,” that one’s level of content to a degree is contingent upon their ability to act as a consumer in society. Peck and Douthat base their assumption on research which shows, “For individual countries, with few exceptions, self-reported happiness has increased as incomes have risen” (332, par.4) Based on this statistic, it is being assumed that one’s ability to support their lifestyle and perhaps better it creates a sense of security that leads to happiness.

For our Economics subject, we watched The Pursuit of Happyness, a movie based on Chris Gardner, a salesman who was not making that much money and eventually experiences homelessness with his five-year old son. He faces problems when his wife is unwilling to accept his goal to become a stockbroker and leaves him. However, he perseveres even under all this stress.

What is being happy actually like? With the money, school, work, friends, family, etc. issues, how is it possible to become fully happy if there is always something that could be interfering with it? We live in America that promises us to to be all equal and can experience the “life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” But every news show that’s turned on, we hear about a 13 year old “entertaining” child who’s trending on every social media network about her disrespecting her mother more often than the issue on two American adults making terrorist threats and waving a confederate flag at a black child’s birthday party. We Americans get the free education until we graduate to find out that we actually don’t know what

In order to answer the question of if income contributes to the foundation of prosperity I will look into different levels of income between middle-class, lower-class, and higher-class individuals, examining the factors that withhold — or propel — individuals from increasing overall income. In addition, I will examine the relation between income inequality and happiness held for lower income earners, and factors that contribute to the linkage of well-being. To achieve this, I will examine data representative of survey research — conducted globally at different countries — telling levels of income, and comparing those levels of income to respondents overall responses to the question of happiness. Income has closer relations to satisfaction,

Of course, that is just one viewpoint. All the things mentioned above have no relation to contentment in present conditions as even the bare necessities of life are not enough to fulfill the needs of today’s generation, as everything has a price. The reality itself is cruel yet unavoidably true, that you cannot be fed, educated, sheltered, and you cannot have even have any enjoyment or entertainment without some kind of economic support. The modern world has given a price tag to everything, and thus, for many, wealth is indeed the root and ultimate happiness.

Everyone wants to live a happy life. Even those people that hate everything about everyone. The trick is how to get that wanted happiness. Is money a way to achieve this happiness? People, philosophers, professors, and ordinary, everyday people have been pondering this age-old question about the relationship between money and happiness and if money can buy happiness for a very long time. Much research and many surveys have been asked and performed by excited researchers and agog economists. A lot of experiments and presentations galore were rendered by inquisitive University professors and intrigued university undergraduates to provide useful data. As it turns out, money can and will buy happiness for everyone that spends it at the right time and on the right things.

The subject of this paper is the age-old question, “Does Money Buy Happiness”. On the surface, this question appears to be an easy one. Happiness however, is a subjective item. To better answer this, several points must be analyzed such as, “What is happiness?”, “How is it measured?” etc. To better streamline this process, a research question was developed: