‘Money can buy happiness.’ Using findings and concepts from your textbook, elaborate why someone might say this statement is true while another might say it is not always true.

Can Money Buy Happiness? Your Name Course and Section Professor’s Name November 21, 2024 The question that elicits much concern from scholars, economists, and psychologists about whether it is possible to buy happiness with money has existed for as long as fifty years. It makes perfect sense at first glance: money allows one to procure resources, security, and opportunities that make one's life better. However, happiness, expressed frequently in terms of one's perceived level of well-being, is not merely a function of wealth. Though money may reduce worry levels and help people satisfy their essential and desire-related wants, it remains questionable whether it can lead to enduring individual happiness. The law of diminishing marginal utility depicts the scenario whereby, with additional income, the level of satisfaction that results from it goes down. Symbolically, the hedonic treadmill connotes the same thing about people's financial gains, where everyone gets used to higher standards without being content. On the other hand, the literature being reviewed shows that top-down predictors comprising cognitive perceptions, personality traits, and quality of social relationships are the ones that measure happiness. These facts stress subjectivity, the nonmaterial perception of life situations rather than material values. Culture and society make it even harder to sort out because they set the standards for what constitutes wealth and how to be happy. For instance, while the collectivistic-orientated cultures' relational well-being might be valued more than material wealth, the individualistic-oriented cultures may prefer more individual success and money. This essay investigates one of life's great pleasures – money – as a determinant of happiness and an object often associated with it. Moreover, it considers culture, intrinsic motivations, and emotions, which Warr looks at regarding the overall picture of happiness. Money and Enhancing Happiness The second is the bottom-up perspective of money as a predictor of subjective well-being in prescribing primary needs and psychological requirements. Evaluations have shown that income and life satisfaction remarkably have a strong positive relationship, especially among those leaving the poverty bracket. For instance, Kahneman and Deaton 2010 revealed that income causes an increase in reported happiness levels up to $85,375 per year based on inflation-adjusted 2017 USD. After this point, an extra dollar is worth even less, diminishing marginal utility (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010; Diener et al., 2010). On the national scale, the livability theory of well-being also provides evidence that the more prosperous country is happier. It leads to civil rights, education, and healthcare, and indeed, Democracy improves life satisfaction, as Diener et al. (2010) pointed out (Diener et al., 2010). Furthermore, happiness increases with expenditure on what is known as experiences that include traveling and those that you share with loved ones or that are developmentally enriching​. At a personal level, financial stability relieves Stress since people have adequate and reliable income for basic needs such as food, shelter, and medical facilities. This essential security enables persons to get what they cannot obtain because they lack basic security, including items in Maslow's hierarchy of needs such as esteem and self-actualization. For example, people use money to invest in personal interest or give to charity, resulting in a meaningful feeling (Lyubomirsky et al., 2004). Limitations of Wealth in Sustaining Happiness That is precisely what money does to an extent, but it is not always true, and causes are not entirely caused by money. On the other hand, the hedonic treadmill helps explain how people quickly get used to better financial conditions and the accumulated pleasure resulting from acquiring wealth. This example clearly shows that money does not make people happy since wealth magnifies expectations; this is because when people are rich, they think that more riches equals more happiness. In particular, culture mediates the interaction between money and happiness. For i...