Link: Feeling blue? Go get some poor friends.

Study says money only makes you happy if it makes you richer than your neighbours

This sounds problematic. Someone will always be richer than me, and with the Internet, I’ll know all about him or her. So greed is a chase after hierarchical elevation? Is money the only measure in this study? What about lottery winners? They must be craziest of all. Can I get a raise? Wait, wouldn’t that make my poor friends hate me? How does friendship even exist then? Need some buddha power here. I want more coffee.

Quotes from the release:

“Earning a million [dollars] a year appears to be not enough to make you happy if you know your friends all earn 2 million a year.”

“The results explain why making everybody in society richer will not necessarily increase overall happiness – because it is only having a higher income than other people that matters.”

“The researchers were seeking to explain why people in rich nations have not become any happier on average over the last 40 years even though economic growth has led to substantial increases in average incomes.”

Via physorg.com

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