...A The views on the relation between wealth and happiness presented in text 1 and 2 are different. David Brooks, text 1, does not think that money has anything to do with happiness. In fact he contrasts being in a well-functioning marriage and other social relations with having a well-paid career. His main argument is that personal relations are much more important than having a great career and all the money that comes with it. Brooks makes an example with Sandra Bullock. Two important things happened to her in one month; she won an Academy Award for best actress – and afterwards came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. In light of this Brooks argues that marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it does not matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain unfulfilled. Therefore personal relations are much more important than having a great career and lots of money. Brooks concludes that people in general have a tendon to overestimate the value of money. Text 2, written by Stephanie Rosenbloom, has a different focus than text 1. Rosenbloom is looking at which way of spending your money gives most happiness. According to Rosenbloom it matters how we choose to spend our money – in fact she argues; if we choose to spend our money on something that we have wanted and thought about buying...
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...Wealth and Happiness 1. The first text “The Sandra Bullock Trade” says that marital happiness is more important than anything else in determining happiness. If you have a good marriage, then no matter how many personal setbacks you have, you will always be reasonably happy. If you do not have a good marriage the no matter how many career triumphs you gain, you will still be unfulfilled. It also says that the relationship between happiness and income is complicated for instance poor nations become happier as they become middle-class. But when they achieved the basic things, the income is not that important anymore. At the same time the text also says that if you join a group it makes you just has happy as if you double your income. In the end the text mentions two impressions, the first one is that from all the research you can see that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life and it comes from interpersonal relationships and that is way deeper and more important. The other impression is that we pay attention to the wrong things. We overestimate the fact that money will make our lives better. Text number 2 is “But Will It Make You Happy?” it starts with saying that consumers spend more and spend less than they have done in a long time. It also says that new studies of consumption happiness show that people are happier when they spend money on experiences than when they buy material objects. Yet the text says that scholars haven’t found out whether...
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...of the views on the relation between wealth and happiness presented in texts 1 and 2. David Brooks who is the narrator in texts 1 telling us of how wealth is nothing compared to the relationship with other people. Out of some studies that have been made it has been proven that most people get more happiness by socializing with others then making lots of money. David Brook does not think that money has anything to do with happiness. He means that marital happiness is more important than anything else. It doesn’t matter how successful you are or how many triumphs you record career. It is the personal relations there are much more important than having a great career with lots of money. In this text David Brook makes an example with Sandra Bullock. Two important things happened to her in one month. Sandra won an Academy Award for best actress and afterwards came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. David argues that marital happiness is more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you just have a successful marriage, you will be happy immediately. Text 1 ends with that personal relation are much more important than having a great career and lots of money. The relationships are the most important of all. Text 2 written by Stephanie Rosenbloom is more different then text 1. Text 2 has another focus. Stephanie Rosenbloom is looking at which way of spending money gives the most happiness in people’s life. According to Stephanie...
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...Wealth and happiness The human kind has always strived towards power, and wealth is one of the necessities for those who want this power. However, nowadays many seek wealth, because they want the freedom that money can grant, and thus become happier. Some people tend overrate how much happier they will get by becoming rich. That leads to the question: “Can you buy happiness?” 1. In the first text, David Brooks tries to explain the correlation between wealth and happiness. With Sandra Bullock’s experience as an example, he tries to prove his point that getting richer only will make you a little bit happier, as in the USA, where the country has gotten a lot richer during the last 50 years, but not happier than before. However, he does speak of the fact that as long you do not have the necessities covered; moving from being poor to middle-class will increase the happiness of a person’s life. In addition does Brooks speak of social objectives, such as being married or joining a group to commute, which are able to improve well-being as much as money can. He concludes his article by giving us his impressions of the subject. First, he believes interaction and relationships with other people is the source of economic and professional success. Second, he believes people overestimate the power of money, and that schools are preparing students too much for careers and not enough on dealing with social decisions. “But Will It Make You Happy” by Stephanie Rosenbloom is taking its stand...
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...THE RELATION BETWEEN WEALTH AND HAPPINESS A1: The articles The Sandra Bullock Trade and But Will It Make You Happier? both dis-cuss the relation between wealth and happiness, and it doesn’t require much to figure out, that these articles agree that happiness doesn’t depend on wealth in general. But as The Sandra Bullock Trade nearly refuses any connection between the two and even states that “if you have an unsuccessful marriage (…) you will remain significantly unfulfilled” (p. 2), But Will It Make You Happier? points out that even though happiness isn’t dependent on income, your buys will influence your mood. The Sandra Bullock Trade acknowledges that poor people are generally unhappier, but the article also claims that as long as your basic needs are fulfilled, money makes no difference. This is probably the biggest disagreement between the articles, as But Will It Make You Happier? is somewhat more capable of differ-entiating the dilemma. Instead of just having a one-tack mind, the article focuses on both the pleasure that money can bring, but it also declares how we are more likely to find joy when we buy social activities than when we buy material objects. A2: The Sandra Bullock Trade catches your attention from the very beginning. The headline itself makes you want to read it, because a celebrity like Sandra Bullock is a person that will instantly catch your attention whether you want her to or not. Another means, which The Sandra Bullock Trade uses, is to turn...
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...1) Divide the stanzas: Stanzas 1-3 A request for making a mutual attempt at letting America live up to the dreams that were once dreamed about it – by the pioneers and in its Declaration of independence Stanza 4: An interlude – someone asking who the lyric speaker is Stanzas 5-7: An elaborate answer to the question above: The lyric speaker, the “I” is (a representative of) the black man, the Indian, the poor white man, the people Stanza 8: The same person as above, now described as the pioneer who left his home country because of a dream – but it remains a dream Stanzas 9-10: repetition of the request to make America what it was intended to be – a country for every man, including the lyric speaker (representative of the people) Stanza 11: The land must be redeemed by the people (we) and they (we) must “make America again) 2) The situation( who is telling us the poem, what is being told?: The poem is written by a person telling us about how he wants America to be as it used to be. How all us people should all be the same. How both the indian, the black man, and also the poor white man is innocent in this chancing of America. He says that he is all the persons in one. He is the poor white man searching for gold, he is the Indian disappearing in his own country and he is the black man being dragged to another country to serve white men. He even says that he is the man “who says grab the land, grab the gold, of owning everything for one’s own greed”. He is...
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...Limit on Maximum Wealth Must Be Implemented In Canada. Now is the time for the Canadian Robin Hood to step up, and take away from the rich to give to the poor before it’s too late. The inequalities between the rich and poor citizens are so obscene already, and yet still rising quickly. As Karl Marx puts it, “accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery … at the opposite pole.” According to Forbes magazine, in 2007, twenty three Canadians were billionaires. This means, their wealth is considered to be over one billion dollars each. Compare this to the fact, that in the same year, CBC News estimated Canada’s homeless population to be somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people. These are people who cannot afford the bare minimum. A meager amount, of just a couple hundred dollars a month in rent would be sufficient enough to provide them with a bed to sleep on at night. That being said, an important question arises. How much wealth would one need, in order to be happy? One million? Hundred million? One billion? It is believed by Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, that once basic needs such as food and shelter are met, the rest are little increments which have little effect on an individual’s level of happiness. You might be surprised to hear, but research determined that to “buy happiness” one would need just 40,000 dollars per year. A bundle of happiness could be gained...
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...They say that money guarantees happiness, but in my opinion the poor can be just as happy as rich people and be even more content with their lives. Money makes the world go round. As the most significant sign of wealth, it is no wonder many people have devoted themselves to the pursuit of money. It is commonly believed that money is the ultimate form of happiness and it is believed that people who are without wealth can never match the level of happiness of the wealthy. In simple words, they say that happiness is proportional to wealth. People generally quote the examples of big movie stars, celebrities and the elite and the amounts of wealth they amass. A large number of people follow and idolize these people due to the size of their wealth. Most people then aspire to be rich and famous in life too. Then they use examples of people living in third world countries to contrast the levels of happiness between them and the elite. People would almost certainly believe at face value that these celebrities, through their online blogs and social media, are experiencing genuine happiness although this is not always the case. People often argue that people who are bare bone poor are not happy. They say that such people have to constantly worry about their food and shelter and don’t have the resources or rather have anything to be happy about. Even in our own daily lives we see that the affluent individuals have means to fulfil their materialistic desires and it would certainly seem...
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...2014 Balance and American experience essay There are a number of factors that characterize the development of a country. Wealth and poverty has been the single biggest issue of America since the introduction of money thousands years ago. Money is the equation for freedom in our society, and if we approach it this way then there are thousands of people still enslaved in America today. In the next two paragraphs I will explain what it is really mean to be rich or poor. Wealthy people often seem like they have the world laid out at their feet, especially the ones who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, so to speak. It often seems very unfair that some people can buy any luxury that their hearts desire while others of us struggle to put food on the table for our families and crawl from paycheck to paycheck like a desert traveler dying of thirst. This discontent is expressed in the recent “Occupy Wall Street movements” who coined the phrase “the 99 percent” to describe how most of society languishes and struggles while a select one percent enjoy unimaginable wealth. While it is true that many of these people worked very hard for their fortunes and in some cases, came up from the very poverty that they are now so far above, it is also true that both poverty and wealth are a cycle. Someone that is born into a poor family will have a harder time pulling themselves out of that situation, not least because they will be unable ...
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...brutal death on the balcony in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, but what we didn’t see is the many speeches he gave from 1965 to 1968. Most of those speeches were filmed, but we did not see or read about any of them because the media, politicians, and even some religious leaders have never accepted what Dr. King stood for during his final years. After passage of The Civil Rights Act in 1964, Dr. King called for radical changes in the structure of society to redistribute wealth, and power. He spoke against the huge income gaps between rich people, and poor people. Dr. King said: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” Today we have another African American leader named Barrack Obama who is also calling for “radical changes in the restructure of our society” to redistribute wealth, and to make health care affordable, and available for all Americans. Will we stand with him, and “fight for the pursuit of happiness”, or will we let this opportunity pass us by, and make his birthday a day in which we look at film of his great speeches? Let’s fulfill the...
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...Zach Peters PHIL 220 April 10, 2015 Essay 2 Neil Levy’s article goes into depth on the controversial philosophy of money and its effect on happiness. Contrary to popular belief, Levy states that national surveys provide data that suggests money has very little effect on overall happiness. In this essay, I am going to analyze Levy’s article and explain why and how he believes money is of little importance in achieving overall well-being. I am also going to attempt to find correlations between income and happiness that Levy thinks may have significance in answering this philosophical question. My hopes are to find an alternative understanding of these correlations that the author may not have taken into consideration during his research. First, it is important for me to identify the possible scenarios that Levy puts on the y-axis. Happiness, being the underlying measurement, is affected by a variety of factors. Levy believes that in poorer countries, comfort and stress are thresholds that control happiness to a certain extent. The extent is to whether or not they have enough money to achieve the basic needs of life. For example, a roof over your head and enough food to survive. If these basic needs are met, money has little to no effect on their happiness. Along with comfort and stress, he discusses adaption and contentment as important factors that are effected by income. People seem to adapt to rises in the economy but fail to adapt when they experience a fall. During falls...
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...high regard. On the other hand, Igby Goes Down is set in the 1980s -1990’s American era, a time of expanding multi national corporations, materialism and commercialism. Salinger and Steers utilise the characterisation of their young, sardonic and rebellious protagonists, Holden and Igby to epitomise non-conformity. The composers allude to the recurring theme of isolation and alienation in both texts. As a result of their non-conformity, the protagonists experience rejection and depression as they search for their selfhood. Similarly, the national ethos of the American Dream is explored as a mere fallacy, and both composers portray this through their protagonist’s wealthy backgrounds and opulent upbringings and yet money doesn’t bring them happiness. Salinger, through literary devices and Steers, through cinematic techniques effectively convey that youth will always refuse to conform regardless of context because conforming denies individuality. Salinger in his novel The Catcher in The Rye explores the ideas of non-conformity in association with Holden Caulfield’s isolation and alienation. The 1950’s Conservative American context demanded adolescents such as Holden...
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...Often in society, an upsurge in wealth, power and prestige is accompanied by an upsurge in arrogance, and egotism. In prerevolutionary China, wealth is perceived as one of the more important ideals in society, and it is something that multitudes of people get caught up in. The cliché, “wealth does not equal happiness”, is often ignored, and money, social class, and power are the only things people associate with success. Through reading The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, one may find a major theme that is present throughout the novel, is that wealth could erode traditional values. This is proven by Wang Lung’s experiences in the novel, for as he grew in prestige and wealth, his original values, such as his ardent attachment to the land, his...
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...would tell you that the guy she is going to marry should have a nice car and be able to buy her every single Barbie she wants. We’d like to make fun with her adult-like behaviors and of course are not very serious about what she is really saying. However, children don’t tell lies. What she has said reflects a devaluation of marriage in Chinese society. Marriage should be a pure love match; however, it has somehow become an artifice of gaining wealth. Through the tabloid culture, such as the Chinese reality televisions dating show “If You’re the One”, our moral judgment has been imperceptibly influenced because of media’s lack of social responsibilities. Does wealth really place a better role in a relationship than happiness? The answer is definitely negative. We have a long history of arguing what marriage really means to human beings. “In most culture of the past, marriage wasn’t about the happiness of two individuals – it was a political and economic arrangement between two families. Marriage was a way of consolidating wealth, merging resources, forgoing political alliances, and even concluding peace treaties” (Cherlin, Andrew). As time pass by, the rise of individualism changes our view of marriage. We expect the fairness and pleasure in our marriages. It is a huge advancement in human right progress. In China, however, people still consider the economic status as an important part of choosing their partners. The traditional idea of marriage tends to hold people...
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...reject the false American dream and create their own version of happiness.”(Johnson,5)...
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