Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness July 3, 2006 Jill But getting laid regularly will make you feel as good as an extra $50,000 a year. I have $200 in my bank account and I’m living alone in a tiny Greek village (read: Not exactly the most exciting love life). So where does that leave me?
I’d take semi-regularly and $25,000. Who’s handing these out, again? And whatever you do, Jill, don’t pawn your camera, or my vicarious vacation is ruined. Set up a camera relief fund if possible.
Oh, that’s why i feel so poor. Not the student loans and the $XX,XXX.XX tuition per year and the fact that i am currently jobless and still living at the dad and step-mom’s house, not to mention the fact that i can’t get over this damn 3-year-long fight with my mom (with whom i don’t live). I feel poor because i can’t get laid. Yeah, i’m not buying it. And now that i look at the article, it says, “By one reckoning, boosting the frequency of sex in a marriage from once a month to once a week brings as much happiness as an extra $50,000 a year.” (emphasis mine) So it wouldn’t matter how much sex you’re having, Jill, because you’re an unmarried hussy, and therefore can’t possibly be happy.
From the article: Through surveys and some fancy math, economists essentially created a ladder of happiness and found that the extra sex and the extra $50,000 provided the same boost. Your title is misleading, money does buy happiness. So does sex. We would just like to assume that sex is easier to come by than $50,000. Of course I doubt this study looks at whether combining the two affects the hedonistic worth of sex and money, viz. is paying for sex with your extra income twice as pleasurable or half? I really wish people would stop counting hedons and just have some fun already.
Well, here’s the thing. Tell an economist something us commie hippy granola-eating Sociologists have known for years (and more regular people could tell you anyways), and they’ll sniff and tell you it’s not real science so it doesn’t count for shit. When they figure it out on their own, well, “OMG, SCIENTIFIC REVELATION.”
I don’t buy it. It’s based on self-reported happiness. Privilidged access is crap. Get Dr. Brain in there, with the Utile-o-meter, he’ll tell us what’s really up. In a world where 5’6″, 110 pound women describe themselves as fat, and I describe my junk as “above average”, self-report is, AT BEST, suspicious.
Ummm, Really frequency of sex in a marriage going from once a month to four times a month in a marriage probably means something other then sex (For one it values sex at $1388.89 a go). I would suggest that it probably reflects uncontrolled things like marital spats, general situation, health, etc. Now what would really be interesting is to see for which gender in a marriage does the happiness boost fall to most? (Though again it still wouldn’t be sex alone).
I don’t buy it. It’s based on self-reported happiness. How could happiness be anything other than self-reported? It exists entirely in one’s mind – despite the number crunching and data they spit out, it remains qualitative and subjective. There’s a limit to objectively measuring something like happiness. It’s the equivilant of doing a study on how many American women think they’re fat. If 70% think they’re fat, but only 50% are overweight by medical standards – that 70% is still a valid number. Self-reported happiness doesn’t necessarily invalidate the study here. Although, self-reporting relative past or future happiness would be suspect. We don’t know exactly what went in to the study here, though. What I find suspicious is that they’re trying to measure something qualitative quantitatively, on the oft-held assumption that numbers and math somehow equal hard science. Economics is still a social science, and any study looking at something like happiness requires a heavy critical awareness of the limitations of bias, and balance of qualitative study methods. However, I think the value of these sorts of studies lie less in gaining an actual understanding of happiness than in translating what most of the world already knows into the numbers necessary to communicate with old-school economists and governments. If it gets governments to start considering alternative veiwpoints to economic/social development, than there’s nothing wrong with that. So long as it’s followed up in application with more specific and localized knowledge. For the rest of us, though, I’m not sure it’s more than an amusement. Although, if any scientists are interested in testing these numbers, I might consider reducing my nookie to once a month in exchange for the 25 – 50,000. Is less sex for money anti-prostitution? And Robert, getting laid makes you feel rich, but not getting laid doesn’t necessarily make you feel poor. They’re equating the relative degrees of happiness. The most we could extrapolate from this data is that ‘getting laid’ + ‘poor’ = happier than ‘not getting laid’ + ‘poor’. But, we might assume that, in Western countries at least, ‘getting laid’ + ‘financially stable’ = greater happiness than either of the above.
With my last ex, I got laid all. the. time. It still didn’t make up for a lack of money on his part so we could do practical things like oh, afford an apartment together. I’m happier being celibate and not stressing about how I’m going to pay my bills when he’s practically living off me. Sex hormones only last so long.
Word, Jennifer. I get laid plenty, and I’d do with giving up a lot of it just to stop worrying where my next rent check or grocery run or prescription-filling is coming from. Come to think about it, without the constant money worries, my relationship would be under a lot less stress, too.