the point...

anyone else feel like i'm beating a dead horse with this wealth/well-being crap? wait, don't answer that. i have one more thing to say about it and then i'll move on for a while.

folks are all excited that studies cannot prove a positive correlation between wealth and happiness, with some large exceptions. psychologists seem to feel this discredits the merits of wealth (and, generally, capitalism). they may be wrong on several counts, and they also forget that happiness is correlated to very few things anyway. in fact, studies show that even one's health is not even correlated to her happiness.

to psychologists, studies of wealth and well-being "prove" that wealth is not an ultimate goal of society as it is not relevant, generally, to happiness. if one applies that logic to health vs. happiness discovery, we'd have to conclude that good health is also not a worthy goal in and of itself because it does not directly promote happiness. significant funds should be diverted from medical research to things psychologist deem more likely to produce happiness, like cognitive therapy, perhaps.

of course, no one dares to seriously make this argument, but it does help to illustrate how silly the well-being-over-wealth argument is. that the link between health and well-being is tenuous does not mean we should ignore health. health has objective value, and the same goes for wealth. and wealth may not make us that much happier, but it serves a net good nonetheless by, among other things, providing us with safety and security during crisis and disability.

Labels: well being