AMERICA - Can Money Buy Happiness? Not in the U.S.

IMHO money cannot buy happiness, it just makes it easier because financial worries are less.

"Finding the Connection Between Prosperity, Compassion and Happiness" PBS Newshour 6/20/2013

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  Now, ask yourself, does having more money make us happy?

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman went in search of answers.  It's part of his ongoing reporting “Making Sen$e of Financial News.”

PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour):  The University of California at Berkeley, a key location for one of the hot new subfields in economics, happiness studies.  But, despite living in the wealthiest economy in the history of the world, Americans are a surprisingly unhappy lot.

Christine Carter is a sociologist at Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.

CHRISTINE CARTER, University of California, Berkeley:  Usually, what we see across countries is that, as GDP goes up, happiness goes up or subjective well-being tends to go up.

And the U.S. is kind of a notable case, in the sense that in the last 35 years as GDP has grown, we actually haven't seen our average happiness level go up.