Does Money Buy Happiness?
Posted on | April 2, 2006 |
What makes the people immigrate to the United States? Why does a person agree to leave their country, family, friends, memories and even their history? What are they looking for? Is it all about money, future, or something else?
Emigration is always hard, period, and for that reason I find it highly interesting to think about the reasons why people decide to leave everything behind just for an objective.
Victor Rosa (John Leguizamo in one of my favorites movies, Empire), has an awesome monolog, pretty hard but interesting:
…”Damn. Had I known what I know now.
But today cats are different.
We all know selling and competition, that’s what this country’s built on.
It’s all about one thing: making money.
Money, baby. Simple as that.
Everything else is just bullshit.
Money is why people come here from every country in the world.
It’s what the American dream is all about.
You think people come here from all over the world to live in East New York…
in Harlem, the South Bronx…
because of the beautiful views, because of the fucking quality of life?
My name is Victor Rosa.
I’m young, Latin and good-looking, and I call it like I see it, baby.
‘Cause I’m gonna tell you what I think whether you wanna hear it or not”….
All about money, that’s it? Money is happiness, money makes people happier? Is it that simple? How much money you have makes a person happy? A ten, hundred, thousand, million or a billion dollars is the cost of happiness? Well my friends, I’m afraid it is not as simple as that.
Twenty years ago Richard Easterlin said that the most developed nations are not happier than the less off ones. Nevertheless, Easterlin argues that in every nation the richest people are happier than the poorest ones. He explained this contradiction as follows: people evaluate their economic situation depending on their neighbors’ economic situation. If in one Country the economy grows, then the social position of one person with respect to their neighbor will be the same.
Since then there has been a lot of research that has contradicted Easterlin’s theory. This research demonstrates that when economic growth increases, the overall feelings of economic improvement for every inhabitant and the economic differences from one country to another are not directly related to the GDP.
Apparently money doesn’t buy happiness itself. Almost every person in the world needs to compare themselves to others in order to measure their own happiness.
I am quite sure that we can find out the answer in something called the Tide Effect. When the tide is high, the level of every boat rises. This means that when the economy of one specific country grows, the quality of life of every inhabitant increases, which does not allow for comparisons. If my salary increases but the salary of my neighbor also increases, then the sensation of personal grow is neutral.
Coming back to the main topic, if money does not buy happiness, what happened with the Latinos that immigrated to the United States? There are different stages in the immigrant life cycle, and I will focus in the first stage. It starts when the Latino arrives to the US and doesn’t finish until around two years later. This period is split into two sections:
1- The Latino compares everything with his home country and feels he is socially and economically better than in his nation. Now he lives in a better house, he has the car that probably always wanted, and he lives better than other people he knows, because he is still comparing himself with people from his former country. This period finishes in approximately one year, when the Latino starts comparing himself with other people from the US.
2- In the second period, the Latino compares himself with people from the United States, and they get interested in the fact that they are not better off than their “neighbors” and the troubles start. Probably some of them think that they are wasting their time, but it is likely that there is no way back.
Most low-middle class people in Argentina are not able to buy a Neon, a Civic, a Corolla or a Sentra. If a low-middle class Argentinean immigrates to the states and gets a job in construction he can easily buy one of those cars, and he will probably feel as though he is climbing up. Then he starts comparing himself to his neighbors and realizes that he is not climbing, and is actually probably doing the opposite.
The corollary is that money does not buy happiness; it just gives people the chance to buy things that allow them feel comparatively better than other people.
Juan Manuel Damia
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April 19th, 2006 @ 5:36 pm
In Brazil is very usual to say “Money doesn`t buy happines, but it orders by phone”… lol!