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Does Money Buy Happiness? Essay examples

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Does Money Buy Happiness? Donald Tolbert John Brown University Executive Summary The subject of this paper is the age-old question, “Does Money Buy Happiness”. On the surface, this question appears to be an easy one. Happiness however, is a subjective item. To better answer this, several points must be analyzed such as, “What is happiness?”, “How is it measured?” etc. To better streamline this process, a research question was developed: * “Does an increase in personal income cause individuals to have a change in their level of well-being?” In an effort to answer this question, several conflicting views were examined and several individuals were interviewed who had financial windfalls to determine the effect that an …show more content…

Their marriage was torn apart by the introduction of money into the relationship. Just 11 days after winning $1.3 million in the California lottery, Denise filed for divorce. In addition to that, she hid her winnings from her then-husband, hoping to keep it all herself. Denise was quoted as saying she didn’t want her ex-husband “getting his hands on” the winnings (O'Neill, 1999). The story doesn’t end there. Two years later, after going bankrupt and losing his business, Thomas happened upon a piece of misdirected mail that let him on the fact that Denise had won the prize. After legal proceedings, the Judge in the case awarded all the winnings to Thomas. Again, one party might have had a temporary increase in their well-being, but it didn’t last. In contrast to these examples, not all articles that have been researched end badly. Take, for example the stories of Joe and Lisa Johnson, Joan Ginter, and Adeline Angelo. All these individuals won lotteries and have found ways to share their good fortune. Joe Johnson won $10 million in the National Lottery in 1998, but the acquisition of a lifetime wasn’t what he expected. Joe says “In many ways, winning the Lottery had been one of the loneliest things that had ever happened to me” (Cable, 2009). After a couple of years, Joe found that the women that he dated “were more interested in my money than me” (Cable, 2009). After one memorably bad relationship,

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