http://www.zerohedge.com/news/money-can-buy-happiness
Money Can Buy Happiness
by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 30 April 2012
The oft-cited idiom that "money can't buy you happiness" - except in Phat Phong from what we hear - is summarily discussed by Michael Norton in this TED Talk as he notes that if you think that money cannot buy happiness then you are not spending it right. His point is (and his delivery is comedic yet clarifying) that money makes you anti-social or selfish (rather than happy) as we will tend to spend that money on ourselves (or the wrong things - a new Veyron perhaps?). But via experimentation (among people from Vancouver to Uganda) he discovered that spending money in a pro-social way will make you happy... So money can buy you happiness as long as you give it away once you have it - a noteworthy caveat - especially as Norton notes that the size of spending does not matter - as long as it focused towards someone else (and not, as he notes, in a dinner for your girlfriend with hopes of benefits later). In almost every country in the world, people who give money to charity are happier than people who do not give money to charity and interestingly spending-on-other-people made teams or people (sports or sales) more successful - of course, we assume taxation does not count as spending on other people.