In Daedalus, the two excerpts “The Economics of Happiness” by Robert A. Easterlin and “How Not to buy Happiness” by Robert H. Frank, claim that money can play a significant role in happiness. Happiness is usually described as a way of living a good life and satisfied with yourself. However, the idea of happiness does change often; including the methods of becoming happy. When people think of money; they think of expensive gadgets and high paying jobs. Money is not always the answer to everything; it is only a factor of achieving happiness. Money is not the only way to achieve happiness. There are other ways to achieve happiness, these ways can be making a new friend, finally finishing a painting or checking off a goal on a bucket list. …show more content…
Most people attend college to receive a degree for career. Some people think that they need a college degree to receive money; that is not always the case. Some of the most successful people in the world never received their college degree, Mark Zuckerberg, for example. I think that education can actually make people depressed. There is a significant amount of workload that students are required to finish, the stress can become severe that students commit suicide or drop out. It is a fact that income increases for the more educated than the less educated (Easterlin, p. 31). This depends on the certain career that is taken and which country the people reside in. In some countries, the economy is at its high while other countries, there is a lot of poverty. Income does not determine the happiness of the population, the most wealthiest person in the world could have anything he/she wanted but, happiness is difficult for them to achieve. The rich is usually happier than the poor in most countries but there is always a possibility of the opposite (Frank. p. 70). Perhaps, they had a lot of priorities to take care of it and this stressed them because they are known as wealthy. They might have trouble making friends because most of the friends they had in the past or present; used them for their wealth. Income or social status does not prove if someone is happy or satisfied. If people spend their money on fancy things such as cars, houses, clothes; it does not make them any happier (Frank. p. 70). Wealth can become beneficial if people spent it on things they needed. Both of the authors agree that wealth does make anyone happier; it only contributes to the social and economical