happiness – Pilant's Business Ethics Blog

Poor Youngsters as Happy as More Affluent Peers (via Thriven’s Blog)

Is happiness determined by the size of your wallet? I’ve never thought so. But I do believe that debt pressure can make a good life into a living hell. I worry that millions of Americans saddled with debt they can never pay are never going to have a chance at the happiness that the last generation had.

Americans owe 2.4 trillion dollars in consumer debt. Than doesn’t count real estate. The big pieces of that are student loan debts coming in at about 730 billion dollars, credit card debt at 962 billion dollars. That leaves 708 billion for things like auto loans.

In good times, that wouldn’t be that big of a problem. If you have good jobs and a thriving economy, those kinds of debts are manageable.

These aren’t good times.

These debts translate into hardcore misery: lost homes, spousal abuse, alcohol and drug use, crime as well as mental illness.

When the debts are larger than your income, you lay awake at night. It sits in the back of your mind like a dull pain that never goes away. You feel it when you talk, when you read, even when you take a step.

You can’t buy a can of pop on the way to work. You can’t buy coffee when you’re cold.

You put gasoline in the car and pray hard that it works okay, even though you have been due for an oil change for three months and the tires are getting bald.

Your life moves away from logic and you rely on luck. Will the car keep running? Will one of us get sick? Can we get some part time work or maybe sell something? That’s what life is when it’s just a matter of luck. Things just happen.

There are millions of Americans out there feeling that kind of pain.

Read the article. It’s well thought out from a good web site.

James Pilant

An important article in today’s Guardian. For many of us who grew up poor or who have close contact with young people and families in the low income category, we would hardly be surprised that life can be as good without much in the way of money. Indeed, in many cases it is better. The genuine positive closeness of people – family, partners and friends – is almost certainly the key factor to feeling secure and happy. There’s nothing like l … Read More

via Thriven’s Blog

59 Seconds, Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman is a book I have enjoyed. Below is a quotation from the book. I think you should consider buying it. I was going to put up an image of the cover but Amazon has a giant copyright notice on the thing and I learned from a miserable experience with CBS news that positive comments and a recommendation don’t matter a damn.

Dunn and her colleagues have conducted several studies on the relationship between income, spending, and happiness. In one national survey , participants were asked to rate their happiness, state their income, and provide a detailed break-down of the amount spent on gifts for themselves, gifts for others, and donations to charity. In another study Dunn measured the happiness and spending patterns of employees before and after they each received a profit-sharing bonus of between $3,000 and $8,000. Time and again, the same pattern emerged. Those who spent a higher percentage of their income on others were far happier than those who spent it on themselves.

This is a fascinating passage. Apparently Greed is not the only important human value. It would seem that contrary to Ayn Rand, altruism is not evil but a useful tool in the full and happy life. It’s amazing what you can learn from research.