Happiness Is ... Making More Money Than the Next Guy

[Gman2]

One key to happiness might be whether you make more than your peers, regardless of whether that income is six figures or just a mediocre take-home, a new study finds.


This concept of "doing better than the Joneses" is well established among children: A toy gets ditched as soon as a shinier toy in the hands of another child is spotted. But some researchers have often thought that when it comes to adults and money, things works differently, in that the more money one has, regardless of how it stacks up, the more resources can be acquired to generate happiness.


However, the new study suggests income and happiness are indeed like child's play.


We tend to be happy "as long as we've got more than the people around us," said study researcher Christopher Boyce in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick in England. "You might buy a new car. But if your neighbor has just bought the very same car, that new car doesn't seem as good as it once was if you were the only one to have that car."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100319/sc_livescience/happinessismakingmoremoneythanthenextguy

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This is why we must not help the ill or poor. This is why we must not have affirmative action. This is why the rightwingers scream at all those poor/ill, that still have TV's, and dishes and junk.

[agent46]

1. Those who are favored

Those who are favored by god rise to the surface of the pond.

[agent46]

6. by way of an explanation

It's the money = god equation that's become prevalent these days.

I posted this when i was still drowsy this morning. Wasn't meant to be offensive.

[grantcart]

2. Famous Russian fable

Two poor peasants living on the side of a hill have almost exactly the same house and plot of land. Both raise a dozen chickens and plant some potatoes. In all relevent matters they share a mirrored existence.

Except one owns a goat and gets half a cup of milk a day from this decrepit goat.

Then one day the peasant that does not own the goat is out looking for mushrooms and berries and finds a latern and returns home with a prized possession.

He gets a rag and starts to polish it and a genie comes out.

"Peasant you have released me from 400 years of being cursed living in that lamp. I will grant you one wish, you can have anything you want, what is your wish."

"If I can have anything I want then there is only one thing I would wish for

and that is . . .


(answer down space)


















KILL THAT GOAT".

[agent46]

7. Harsh n/t

[Lex87]

3. Re: Happiness Is ... Making More Money Than the Next Guy

This *is* what drives us. The constant need to explore, to improve upon what we see around us.

I love that we know this, and yet still have the respect for people's rights and freedoms to not force our desires on them. That's what makes us unique, artistic, and such a great country. If the rich had their way everyone would be stripped of any freedoms that distract them from competing with the next person to drive our economy and make the rich richer.

[Gman2]

4. I have lectured on those dichotomies, they are unintuitive for most.

Understanding human nature is not possible with any ideology.

[Gman2]

5. One of my most important intellectual discoveries was that status, is more important than sex.

Man's desire for admiration, and status, is even more important than procreation, and spreading ones own seed. It made human nature more understandable. Perhaps then, we may offer POTLATCH, as a mechanism to support the ill and poor. Stroke their ego's as they give unselfishly, on camera.