Undervalued Happiness

I have a long-standing hate of the Yahoo! source site Live Science, due to their ill-written, conceived, and executed articles...and even if they become Live Finance, I'll hate them too.

Using the old conceit "money can't buy happiness", they argue that perhaps it might! According to a new poll, an annual household income of $50,000 is enough to "increase the likelihood of people feeling an overall sense of happiness and satisfaction in life".  That must be the cheapest happiness available.  To arrive at that number, the researchers at Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College (no, I don't think that's a real place either), asked people to rate their level of satisfaction in the following areas of their lives: family, neighborhood safety, housing situation, spiritual life, health, friends, work or how days are spent, free time, finances and community involvement. Afterwards, they asked them to identify their annual household income, and households with annual incomes of less than $50,000 were not as happy as those with more than $50,000. 

The survey also found that in the past year:

•57% cut back on spending

•26% considered delaying retirement

•17% had trouble paying for medical care

•14% had trouble paying their mortgage

•12% had trouble paying for prescription drugs

Yeah, if your household - that's you plus everybody who lives there, make less than $50,000, you not only have trouble paying for your medicine and shelter, but you're probably on the cusp of not being able to survive.  There's no delaying retirement - you're gonna die an 87 year old greeter at Wal-Mart.  Or next week, when you can't afford to pay your utilities and the main line backs up and you get a horrible infection from the filthy conditions.

Their study was based on the responses of over 1200 people in a telephone survey, and that pretty much tells you the most important yet hidden detail of the research - any idiot who would take a phone survey is unlikely to ever comprise a household that will make more than $50,000.