What’s the Price of Happiness? $75,000

From GOOD, quoting the Los Angeles Times:  all I do is steal other people’s thoughts  - Jedidiah

The freedom to pursue happiness is an inalienable human right in this country, but what does happiness actually cost to attain? According to researchers at Princeton, who surveyed 450,000 Americans between 2008 and 2009, it’s about $75,000.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The study found that people’s evaluations of their lives improved steadily with annual income. But the quality of their everyday experiences — their feelings — did not improve above an income of $75,000 a year. As income decreased from $75,000, people reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness, as well as stress. The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one.

The researchers do point out that people earning $75,000 a year would not necessarily be unhappy to receive a raise.

According to the U.S. Census, median household income was $50,303 in 2008.

The brand-spankin-new $100 bill

The new $100 bill was announced today.  It’s got all sorts of new security features and stuff. Cool.

But look how pretty it is! (Apart from the blue ribbon down the center, of course.)

Show me the green…and maybe a little bit of orange.

-Azy

The future of money

This articles makes you think about what money is, how it has changed, and what form it will take next.

-Azy

From Matador:

A funny thing happened the other day. My Cairo taxi driver took one look at the bundle of raggedy notes I was trying to give him, and asked if I had some coins instead.

But mere months ago, he’d have done everything in his power not to take coins, even if that meant committing the sacrilege of breaking a large note. Coins weren’t considered “real money”, and people looked at you like you were offering them a handful of scrap metal. Now, the coins are everywhere, and accepted without question.

When I told my housemate this story, he laughed. “In Korea,” he said, “we use our mobile phones to pay for things like bus journeys.” They hold their phones up to a reader when they get on, and the money is either debited directly from their bank, or added to their next phone bill. Same goes for buying things in some shops.

Now, I’m no hick – I even had a credit card, once – but I had no idea such magic was possible. It got me thinking on what I know about money.

What is money?

I know that “money makes the world go round.” We use it to buy stuff. And I never seem to have enough of it. (But that’s OK, because I don’t want much stuff.)

I also know we started off by bartering for the things we needed: two chickens for a bag of grain, or a sack of magic herbs for the latest model of ax. (Actually, we probably started off hitting people over the head with our ax and taking their magic herbs, but that’s a different story.)

Read the rest of the article here.