The fortune teller

I've only started recently to read the Private Sector Development blog of the World Bank. It's quite corporate in the sense that you can't expect the spontaneity of a private blog, but it has nevertheless some interesting insights. Today, I found Who Says Money Can't Buy Happiness?, an opinion piece by Johan Norberg, a Swedish free-marketer - very much a brown bear lost in Lapland.

I don't tend to be too sympathetic to views that link money to happiness, but Norberg struck a chord. He said that the perspective of a better life makes one happy, hence that economic growth is key to happiness.

Here's my take: Happiness is an acceleration, just the way gravity is an acceleration. You feel good when there's a positive change in your situation. Remember how you felt when you bought that shirt/car/house or when you met that amazing girl? Now you curse your shirt because it needs ironing, your car is dirty again and the house's roof is leaking. And the girl is edgy today. Desperation. It's not that belongings and loved ones don't make you happy. It's just that they no longer bring a positive change to your situation. You got used to their presence: they're part of your normal life.

The difference between my theory and that of Norberg, is that he focuses on the perspective of change while I think happiness comes from the change itself. To him, expecting a party is true happiness. To me, the party (or at least the beginning of it) is happiness.

So, does money make you happy? Only when you get more of it. That's from a certain level of course - no money is rarely is ever a source of happiness. Norberg's logical deduction is that we should provide eternal economic growth to create a non-stop expectation of higher income. You'd think that I agree since constant economic growth provides an increase in income - a positive change.

I'm not ready to take that step. The quest for more money is time-consuming. It requires a long-term engagement, at the detriment of other activities that can make one happy. Actually, according to my theory, any (perceived) positive change brings happiness. There's a lot of effort to put in aspects of one life other than greater revenues that can bring happiness. Making new friends, arranging meetings with them, reading books, discovering new places, etc.

I don't mean to bash economic growth. I'm all for it. But when some say that too much emphasis is put on it, I tend to agree.