Summary Of Maybe Money Buy Happiness After All

In the article “Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All,” David Leonhardt discusses whether or not money is a factor that affects ones happiness. Leonhardt is an American journalist and a columnist. Leonhardt graduated from Horace Mann School in 1990. He later on continued his studies at Yale University and graduated with a bachelor in science and a degree in applied mathematics. While his experience in Yale, Leonhardt worked as an editor-in-chief in the Yale Daily News. He won many awards including the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism from the Chicago Headline Club for a story he wrote about the problems in McDonalds.
Leonhardt has been focusing on the subject of politics and economics since 2014, which makes him an expert in
this topic. Having his own economics column “Economic Scene” in Times Magazine, Leonhardt has been writing for the Times since the year 2000. His experience in the field of economics and his many years of working in this field, gives him qualification to be talking about the effect money can have on an individuals happiness. His high ranking in magazines like the Times also makes him creditable to be talking about this matter.
In “Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All,” David Leonhardt talks about how effective economic growth can be on one’s life.
He starts off by explaining how an increase in the level of economic growth does not necessarily lead to more happiness. According to the Easterlin paradox, from the late 1950s to the early 70s, people were richer but not any happier. Economist Richard Easterlin published a study where he argues that at times of economic growth, satisfaction levels don’t increase in correspondence to the increase in national wealth. The only time people truly become happier is when they become wealthy enough to satisfy basic human needs such as water, food, and shelter. Human wants are unlimited, for they always desire more than what they have. When one acquires the iPod sooner or later, then they begin to want more such as the iPod Touch. Two young economists proposed a rebuttal to the paradox where it has caught the eyes of top economists around the world and the question of whether or not money can buy happiness started being questioned once again, which has led to a lively response from Richard. In this rebuttal, an increase in income does achieve greater levels of happiness, however it is not guaranteed for everyone. According to Ms. Stevenson “The central message is that income does
matter.”
When it comes to the use of support strategies and distinctive writing techniques, Leonhardt uses a several different strategies including statistics, facts, quotations and even expert opinions. However, Leonhardt’s over reliance on statistical studies throughout the article was the most common and in my opinion the most effective. Statistics shows an insight on numbers and studies taken all over the world on different regular individuals, where as if concentrated on the experts opinions he wouldn’t have been as convincing since not everyone will be familiar with the expert that is being quoted. Although the use of these strategies was concentrated at the beginning and faded as we went further in the article. The strategies used against the Easterlin paradox were strong enough to raise an argument that money does buy happiness, not that money is necessary to be happy but with money people tend to be happier.
The article starts off by the change in the Japanese economical state from 1950 to the 1970s. After being torn in war Japan made a comeback as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Leonhardt used a poll to prove what period of time people felt most positive in, and the answers he got were surprisingly shocking, the people were richer but not happier. However, Leonhardt doesn’t support his evidence and only mentions it as “one poll” giving no background information about the poll. Therefore, people may question the reliability of such example. Leonhardt later on mentioned that his theory is descried as Easterlin paradox, but doesn’t elaborate more about this paradox. The author also mentions that people in poorer countries are happier with money when they can buy their basic necessities, but then again doesn’t use any data to prove to his readers. He assumes that people in poorer countries would be happier with more money and also assumes that people know that so he doesn’t use any evidence to support this point. He then goes on to talk about how human needs are endless and it is because they will always want more. His use of many different examples could have been more effective if supported with evidence or proof to strengthen his argument. However, the proof that came along with the two students from the University of Pennsylvania was pretty weak as well as it was based on polls too. You can’t generalize the opinion of a whole population by the use of just certain individual’s responses. Leonhardt could have used more evidence overall, the use of examples would’ve made his theory more convincing. Towards the end of his article, Leonhardt talks about how it has been scientifically proven that other things are of more importance to ones happiness such as family and friends. However, Leonhardt also lacked evidence to this research, which also made it like every other topic he brought up. Leonhardt left us with questioning this topic even more, by giving us many bits of information and not stating them as a whole.
In my opinion, the author could have used more proof to support his examples; the use of numbers and data that is supported would have been more convincing to the readers. The aim of this subject was to raise the question of whether or not money leads to happiness and makes people rethink whether money is really an important factor in their lives. Throughout the article the author showed knowledge towards the subject but did not have enough to prove to those who weren’t knowledgably by giving examples. I personally wouldn’t recommend this article for research as it mentions many cases and opinions but does not go into detail, so if used for research, researcher would have to go in depth and do further research on each of the mentioned topics.