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Analysis Of David Leonhardt's 'Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All'

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Analysis Of David Leonhardt's 'Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All'
In “Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All, “David Leonhardt claims there is a strong relationship between wealth and contentment. David Leonhardt studied Mathematics at Yale University. He has been working for the New York Times since 1999, he works there as a columnist where he discusses matters about economics, the column is called “The Economic Scene “. Leonhardt wrote for two well-known Newspapers such as Business Week and The Washington Post. The Gerald Loeb Awards is one of the most respected awards for business journalism, it was first established to urge journalist to write about the business and finance world, to warn the public and private investors on the economic issues that society faces on daily bases. Leonhardt managed to …show more content…
All the reasons the writer discussed were similar to each other; the consideration of other reasons or the usage of other research methods were noticeably deficient. Although Leonhardt provided persuasive facts to explain why wealth and satisfaction might be related to each other, a large part of his portrayals on why wealth might affect self-contentment included neither research reference nor the acknowledgement that the statements were his opinions resulting in logical fallacies. For example, when he wrote “ To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPod doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPod Touch.” Leonhardt here was try to simplify what the Easterlin paradox is, yet he ended up making a logical fallacy which is the oversimplification fallacy. He attempted another fallacy when he wrote “The residents of these countries seem to understand that they have it pretty good, whether or not they own an iPod Touch.” A sweeping generalization resulted from writing this sentence when he was assumed that all the residents are satisfied since there is a certain crowd feeling this way. The Bandwagon Appeal fallacy occurred in the article as this statement was written “Judging from that map, the people of the world seem to agree.” Another logical fallacy that occurred in the article was the false cause, Leonhardt assumes that individuals are healthier because they are financially stable, in other words economic growth cause a healthy life even though a healthy life can be caused by so many other factors other than an economic growth. This fallacy “Economic growth can also pay for investments in scientific research that lead to longer, healthier

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