Section A
Pre-reading Questions
1. It’s said “money is something, not everything.” What are your comments on it?
2. In your opinion, what’s a happy life? Do you think the poor can have a happy life?
3. Suppose you were a billionaire, what would you most likely do?
Money and happiness are subjects of universal concern. But whether money can buy happiness has remained an unsettled argument even today. What is your opinion?
Can Money Buy Happiness?
1    Over the past quarter-century, economists and psychologists have banded together to sort out the hows, whys and why nots of money and happiness. Why is it that the more money you have, the more you want? Why doesn’t buying the car, house or cell phone of your dreams bring you more than momentary joy?
2    In attempting to answer these seemingly depressing questions, the new scholars of happiness have arrived at some insights that are, well, completely cheery. Money can help you find more happiness, so long as you know just what you can and can’t expect from it. Much of the research suggests that seeking the good life at a store is an expensive exercise in futility. Before you can pursue happiness the right way, you need to recognize what you’ve been doing wrong.
3    The new science of happiness starts with a simple insight: We’re never satisfied. “We always think if we just had a little bit more money, we’d be happier,” says Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, “but when we get there, we’re not.” Indeed, the more you make, the more you want. The more you have, the less effective it is at bringing you joy, and that seeming paradox has long bedeviled economists. “Once you get basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn’t make a lot more happiness,” notes Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the author of the book Stumbling on Happiness. And while the rich are happier than the poor, the enormous rise in living standards over the past 50 years hasn’t made Americans
happier. Why? Three reasons:
4    You overestimate how much pleasure you’ll get from having more. Humans are adaptable creatures, which has been a plus during assorted ice ages, plagues and wars. But that’s also why you’re never all that satisfied for long when good fortune comes your way. While earning more makes you happy in the short term, you quickly adjust to your new wealth — and everything it buys you. Yes, you get a thrill at first from shiny new cars and a house by the lake. But you soon get used to them, a state of running in place that economists call the “hedonic treadmill.”
5    Even though stuff seldom brings you the satisfaction you expect, you keep returning to the mall and the car dealership in search of more. “When you imagine how much you’re going to enjoy a Porsche, what you’re imagining is the day you get it,” says Gilbert. When your new car loses its ability to make your heart go pitter-patter, he says, you tend to draw the wrong conclusions. Instead of questioning the notion that you can buy happiness on the car lot, you begin to question your choice of car. So you pin your hopes on a new BMW, only to be disappointed again.
6    More money can lead to more stress. The big salary you pull in from your high-paying job may not buy you much in the way of happiness. But it can buy you a spacious house in the suburbs. Trouble is, that also means a long trip to and from work, and study after study confirms what you sense daily: Even if you love your job, the little slice of everyday hell you call the commute can wear you down. You can adjust to time is moneyalmost anything, but a stop-and-go drive or an overstuffed bus will make you unhappy whether it’s your first day on the job or your last.
7    Your tendency to grow bored with the things that you acquire seems to be a deeply rooted human trait. An inability to stay satisfied is arguably one of the key reasons ancient man moved out of his drafty cave and began building the civilization you now inhabit. But you’re not living in a cave, and you likely don’t have to worry about mere survival. You can afford to step off the hedonic treadmill. The question is: how do you do it?
8    If you want to know how to use the money you have to become happier, you need to understand just what it is that brings you happiness in the first place. And that’s where the newest happiness research comes in.
9    Friends and family are a mighty elixir. Innumerable studies suggest that having friends matters a great deal. Large-scale surveys by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, for example, find that those with five or more close friends are 50% more likely to describe themselves as “very happy” than those with smaller social circles. Compared with the happiness-increasing powers of human connection, the power of money looks feeble indeed.
10    Doing things can also bring us more joy than having things. Applying yourself to something hard makes you happy. We’re addicted to challenges, and we’re often far happier while working toward a goal than after we reach it. Challenges help you attain a state of “flow”, total absorption in something that stretches you to the limits of your abilities, mental or physical.
11    Flow takes work. After all, you have to learn to play scales on a guitar before you can lose yourself in a solo — but the satisfaction you get in the end is greater than what you can get out of more passive pursuits. When people are asked what makes them happy on
a moment-to-moment basis, watching TV ranks pretty high. But people who watch a lot of TV tend to be less happy than those who don’t. Settling down on the couch with the remote can help you recharge, but to be truly happy, you need more in your life than passive pleasures.