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  3. Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness What do the experts say? All in all, it was probably a mistake to look for the answer to

Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness What do the experts say? All in all, it was probably a mistake to look for the answer to

admin2010-07-24  21
问题                    Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
    What do the experts say?
    All in all, it was probably a mistake to look for the answer to the eternal question--"Does money buy happiness?"--from people who practice what’s called the gloomy science. For when economists tackled the question, they started from the observation that when people put something up for sale they try to get as much for it as they can, and when people buy something they try to pay as little for it as they can. Both sides in the transaction, the economists noticed, are therefore behaving as if they would be more satisfied, or happier, dare we say, if they ended up receiving more money (the seller) or holding on to more money (the buyer). Hence, more money must be better than less, and the only way more of something can be better than less of it is if it brings you greater satisfaction. The economists’conclusion:  the more money you have, the happier you must be.
    Suicidal CEOs, miserable magnates (大资本家) and other unhappy rich folks aren’t the only ones giving the lie to this."Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness," writes Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of extreme poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter."
    That flies in the face of intuition (直觉), not to mention economic theory. According to standard economies, the most important commodity you can buy with additional wealth is choice. If you have $20 in your pocket, you can decide between steak and peanut butter for dinner, but if you have only $1 you’d better hope you already have a jar of jelly at home. Additional wealth also lets you satisfy additional needs and wants, and the more of those you satisfy the happier you are supposed to be.
    The trouble is, choice is not all it’s cracked up to be. Studies show that people like selecting from among maybe half a dozen kinds of food at the grocery store but find 27 choices overwhelming, leaving them habitually on edge that they could have chosen a better one than they did. And wants, which are nice to be able to afford, have a bad habit of becoming needs. Satisfying needs brings less emotional well-being than satisfying wants.
    What do the common people say?
    The nonlinear (非线性的) nature of how much happiness money can buy comes through clearly in global surveys that ask people how satisfied they feel with their lives. In a typical survey people are asked to rank their sense of well-being or happiness on a scale of 1 to 7, where I means "not at all satisfied with my life" and 7 means  "completely satisfied." Of the American multimillionaires who responded, the average happiness score was 5.8. Homeless people in Calcutta came in at 2.9. But before you assume that money does buy happiness after all. consider who else rated themselves around 5.8: the Inuit of northern Greenland, who do not exactly lead a life of luxury, and the cattle-herding Masai of Kenya, whose huts have no electricity or running water. And proving Gilbert’s point about money buying happiness only when it lifts you out of extreme poverty, slum dwellers in Calcutta-one economic rung above the homeless--rate themselves at 4.6.
    Studies tracking changes in a population’s reported level of happiness over time have also dealt a death blow to the money-buys-happiness claim. Since World War II the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has tripled in the United States. But people’s sense of well-being has barely been altered. Japan has had an even more dramatic rise in GDP per capita since its postwar misery, but measures of national happiness have been flat, as they have also been in Western Europe during its long postwar boom, according to social psychologist Ruut Veenhoven. An analysis of more than  150 studies on wealth and happiness concluded that "economic indicators have obvious shortcomings" as approximations of well-being across nations.
    That’s partly because in an expanding economy, in which former luxuries such as washing machines become necessities, the newly well-off people don’t feel the same joy in having a machine do the laundry that their grandparents, suddenly freed from washboards, did.They just take the machines for granted. Another reason is that an expanding paycheck, especially in an expanding economy, produces expanding aspirations and a sense that there is always one more cool thing out there that you absolutely have to have.
    If money doesn’t buy happiness, what does?
    Grandma was right when she told you to value health and friends, not money and stuff. Researchers add ful-fillment, a sense that life has meaning, "belonging to civil and other groups, and living in a democracy that respects individual rights and the rule of law. If a nation wants to increase its population’s sense of well-being, says Veenhoven, it should make "less investment in economic growth and more in policies that promote good governance, liberties, democracy, trust and public safety."
    Curiously, although money doesn’t buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented(知足的) people are also more likely to marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.
    If more money doesn’t buy more happiness, then the behavior of most Americans looks downright insane, as we work harder and longer, decade after decade. But what is insane for an individual is crucial for a national economy-that is, ever more growth and consumption. Gilbert again:  "Economies can blossom and grow only if people are deceived into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy...Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will strive only for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being." In other words, if you want to do your part for your country’s economy, forget all of the above about money not buying happiness.
Based on standard economics, additional wealth can provide______.
选项 A、more happiness
B、more options
C、the most important commodity
D、additional needs and wants
答案B
解析 该句说到用额外的财富能够买到的最重要的商品就是选择，也即额外的财富能够提供更多选择．B是对该句的正确理解，故为答案。C是强干扰项，the most important commodity在原文喻指choice，而不是商品本身，所以不能说额外的财富能够提供最重要的商品，故排除C。
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