The Price Of Happiness

Our culture glorifies fortune building while warning that money won’t buy contentment (there’s always going to be someone, somewhere, with more). But must the two be mutually exclusive?

- Julie Belcove

The late edgar Bronfman Sr, the billionaire CEO of the Seagram empire, once said he prayed every time he boarded his private jet. Not particularly afraid of flying, he wasn’t imploring God to spare his life in this gravity-defying contraption. Rather, his prayer was an act of gratitude: he was thanking the dear Lord he didn’t have to fly commercial. “If I’m going to be miserable, I’d rather be miserable rich than poor,” he quipped.

Wealth, undeniably, has its benefits. It provides not just cool stuff and superior healthcare but also freedom, control, choices – epitomised by the en masse flight of affluent New Yorkers and other urbanites to their vacation homes when the coronavirus pandemic struck. It’s no coincidence that the number-one thing people think will make them happy is money. They are mistaken. More on that later, but consider that Finland, a nation with just six billionaires (and about that many hours of daylight in winter), has ranked as the happiest country in the world three years in a row. Still, the connection between wealth and happiness is more complex than one might think. The surprising murkiness of money’s emotional impact has led a growing number of academics – psychologists but also economists – to study the subject in-depth and many a therapist to specialize in the troubled psyches of the well-to-do.