moneyandhappiness英语辩论素材

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2024年4月3日发(作者：)

Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

Economists and psychologists—and the rest of us—have long wondered if more money would

make us happier. Here's the answer.

All in all, it was probably a mistake to look for the answer to the eternal(永恒的) question—"Does

money buy happiness?"—from people who practice what's called the dismal science（沉闷科学）.

For when economists tackled（处理） the question, they started from the observation（观察报告）

that when people put something up for sale they try to get as much for it as they can, and when

people buy something they try to pay as little for it as they can. Both sides in the transaction（交易）,

the economists noticed, are therefore behaving as if they would be more satisfied (happier, dare we

say) if they wound up receiving more money (the seller) or holding on to more money (the buyer).

Hence, more money must be better than less, and the only way more of something can be better than

less of it is if it brings you greater contentment. The economists' conclusion: the more money you

have, the happier you must be.

Depressed debutantes（初次参加社交活动的少女）, suicidal（自杀的） CEOs, miserable

magnates（卑鄙的资本家） and other unhappy rich folks（人们） aren't the only ones giving the lie

to this. "Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness,"

writes Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert in his best-selling "Stumbling on Happiness,"

"and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of

abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter."

That flies in the face（悍然不顾） of intuition（直觉）, not to mention economic theory.

According to standard economics, the most important commodity（日用品） you can buy with

additional wealth is choice. If you have $20 in your pocket, you can decide between steak（牛排）

and peanut butter（花生酱） for dinner, but if you have only $1 you'd better hope you already have a

jar of jelly at home. Additional wealth also lets you satisfy additional needs and wants, and the more

of those you satisfy the happier you are supposed to be. The trouble is, choice is not all it's cracked

up to be. Studies show that people like selecting from among maybe half a dozen kinds of pasta at

the grocery store but find 27 choices overwhelming, leaving them chronically on edge that they

could have chosen a better one than they did. And wants, which are nice to be able to afford, have a

bad habit of becoming needs (iPod, anyone?), of which an advertising- and media-saturated culture

create endless numbers. Satisfying needs brings less emotional well-being than satisfying wants.

If money doesn't buy happiness, what does? Grandma was right when she told you to value

health and friends, not money and stuff. Or as Diener and Seligman put it, once your basic needs are

met "differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequently due to

factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work." Other researchers add fulfillment, a

sense that life has meaning, belonging to civic and other groups, and living in a democracy that

respects individual rights and the rule of law. If a nation wants to increase its population's sense of

well-being, says Veenhoven, it should make "less investment in economic growth and more in

policies that promote good governance, liberties, democracy, trust and public safety."

(Curiously, although money doesn't buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who

describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they

were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to

show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented people are also more likely to

marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.)

If more money doesn't buy more happiness, then the behavior of most Americans looks

downright insane, as we work harder and longer, decade after decade, to fatten our W-2s. But what is

insane for an individual is crucial for a national economy—that is, ever more growth and

consumption. Gilbert again: "Economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into

believing that the production of wealth will make them happy … Economies thrive when individuals

strive, but because individuals will strive only for their own happiness, it is essential that they

mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being." In other words,

if you want to do your part for your country's economy, forget all of the above about money not

buying happiness.

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 most 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.

You endlessly compare yourself with the family next door. H.L. Mencken once quipped that the

happy man was one who earned $100 more than his wife's sister's husband. He was right. Happiness

scholars have found that how you stand relative to others makes a much bigger difference to your

sense of well-being than how much you make in an absolute sense.

You may feel a touch of envy when you read about the glamorous lives of the absurdly wealthy,

but the group you likely compare yourself with are folks Harvard economist Erzo Luttmer calls

"similar others"--the people you work with, people you grew up with, old friends and old classmates.

"You have to think, 'I could have been that person,' " Luttmer says.

Money Bliss 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.

Friends and family are a mighty elixir. One secret of happiness? People. 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

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