Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Speaker 1: Charles W. Luscious Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? Sounding funny
Speaker 1: the second time around? Josh actually had to do two
Speaker 1: takes there, and to hear your name as luscious twice
Speaker 1: in a row, he was very special. What did it
Speaker 1: do to you? Made me feeluscious? I guess I'm doing well, sir.
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm pretty good? What are happen to?
Speaker 1: Luscious Jackson? Remember them? Yeah? They were good. They were
Speaker 1: around the same time as uh Good Beast you boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're all buddies. Yeah yeah, I think one of
Speaker 1: them produced their album or something. She Loving Special Sauce.
Speaker 1: That's who I was thinking. I was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of them early on you Yeah, and then they got
Speaker 1: picked up and you're like, just I think just kind
Speaker 1: of lost interest after the third seed or something. Gotcha anyway, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: Chuck equals luxious Jackson fan just just in. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: thick tongued case you had People always ask if Josh
Speaker 1: eats things while we podcast, and that is not true.
Speaker 1: It has a real effect on my happiness. Yes, good
Speaker 1: lead in. No, that's not the lead in. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to psych you out. The seemingly uniquely American
Speaker 1: tradition of killing census bureau workers has begun again in
Speaker 1: the just ahead of the two thousand ten census. Chuck,
Speaker 1: are they are they doing that now? Yeah, it's about
Speaker 1: that time. No one's ever knocked on my door. There
Speaker 1: was a guy named Bill Sparkman, aft one year old
Speaker 1: Census Bureau employee. Um, I think it's just a worker,
Speaker 1: like he was just getting work as a census taker. Uh.
Speaker 1: They found his body hanging from a tree in her cemetery, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and the word fed was growled across it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a new kind of hate crime. Yes, well, no, it's
Speaker 1: not a new Census Bureau workers get killed every everything census. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no idea. Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird thing to do,
Speaker 1: but I hope they get paid. Well. Some people don't
Speaker 1: like their privacy being invaded or their land being stepped on.
Speaker 1: You don't want to knock on my door, brother, Um,
Speaker 1: I can tell you a place where there are census
Speaker 1: takers that probably will not be strung up in trees.
Speaker 1: Bu Bhutan. You know, they had their first census just
Speaker 1: like four years ago. Is that right? Bhutan has been
Speaker 1: undergoing a lot of changes lately, there, chuckers Um. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the king abdicated his throne in
Speaker 1: favor of a parliamentary democracy. Very popular, huge, Yeah, beloved,
Speaker 1: you could say. Actually, he was the beloved son of
Speaker 1: a beloved king Um and he abdicated his throne in
Speaker 1: favor of a democracy because they determined the democracies make
Speaker 1: people happier than kingdoms do. So he wanted to make
Speaker 1: his small I think the census was six nine thousand people,
Speaker 1: Is that it? Yeah, he wanted to make them happy.
Speaker 1: He did, and uh, he did so much so that
Speaker 1: they've also at the same time when they adopted a
Speaker 1: new constitution in a new form of government, they also
Speaker 1: adopted a pretty much a guiding principle for the country
Speaker 1: called gross national happiness. Awesome. That sounds familiar, doesn't remember that, listener, Male,
Speaker 1: I'm the girl who was clearly headed to Yale that
Speaker 1: this fall. Yeah, that she did the survey at her
Speaker 1: own school to find out how happy the fellow students were. Yeah. Cool,
Speaker 1: the the Butanies are into the same thing. You're gonna
Speaker 1: try and pronounce his name, Yes, the King Jigmai Singhay
Speaker 1: wang Chuck. I got the whang chuck part, definitely. They
Speaker 1: said you could call him dragon King. Okay, they meaning
Speaker 1: they called me up, the Boutinees did. They said you
Speaker 1: can just call him dragon King. They heard that we
Speaker 1: were doing this podcast. Indeed, okay, well, the Dragon King,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. By the thing, um, back in
Speaker 1: ninety two, he came up with the idea of gross
Speaker 1: national happiness. Um, that's probably sounds a lot like gross
Speaker 1: domestic product or gross national product. Right, And I'm we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. I'm glad you pointed out in the
Speaker 1: article too that this isn't just uh, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: a fluffy little happy thing they decided to do. They
Speaker 1: were really serious about it. Nor is it tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek like the five day weekend, which we've also talked about. Right,
Speaker 1: This is that they've taken well, we'll we'll break this down, yes, okay. Basically,
Speaker 1: what the Boutanies have done is come to a collective
Speaker 1: agreement that number one, happiness is not just a response
Speaker 1: to external stimuli like a new car or something like that.
Speaker 1: They've taken the decidedly more Buddhist approach to happiness that
Speaker 1: it comes from within, right, which is a lovely sentiment.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's step one. It's easy for Boutan
Speaker 1: to do it because there a Buddhist country right right, um, peaceful.
Speaker 1: So step one was to say, all right, happiness comes
Speaker 1: from with him. Step two is to say, okay, how
Speaker 1: do you achieve this happiness? Key? They actually did this
Speaker 1: survey over three months. I think it was a hundred
Speaker 1: and eight questions, and that was the second version. The
Speaker 1: first one was determined to be just way too long. Yes,
Speaker 1: also those questions too. It's pretty cool, Like what buddy well,
Speaker 1: I mean I went to that. Uh what was the
Speaker 1: website gross National Happiness dot Com? I think actually, or
Speaker 1: or one of the two was it. I can't remember
Speaker 1: it an organ it may be. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: the questions where you didn't know you're gonna put me
Speaker 1: on the spot like this, but there were things like
Speaker 1: how do you feel about or how much rest do
Speaker 1: you get when you perform certain tasks and how does
Speaker 1: this make you feel about your family? Just things like that.
Speaker 1: So what they came up with, Chuck, was a basically
Speaker 1: nine guiding principles toward happiness. Right, Yes, I actually have
Speaker 1: them here? I do too. Oh real, Yes, that means
Speaker 1: touch and french. Um what are they, chuck, because I
Speaker 1: can't find my cherry loves that joke? Uh? Time use,
Speaker 1: living standards, good governance, psychological well being, community fatality, culture, health,
Speaker 1: and education ecology okay, or those are two, I think
Speaker 1: education and ecology. So basically they've figured out that these
Speaker 1: are the nine things combined that make a happy life. Right,
Speaker 1: I could dig that, and I mean some of them
Speaker 1: sound a little obtuse, like psychological well being? What is that? Right? Um? Basically,
Speaker 1: what they've they've come up with is you can't just say, hey,
Speaker 1: how how happy are you? Scale a one to ten?
Speaker 1: Or would you say seven it's not bad? Um? Would
Speaker 1: you say that you're more happy, less happy, or just
Speaker 1: as happy as you were last year? Like the Butanees
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately threw this out the window. They said
Speaker 1: that this is just it's too imprecise, and we have
Speaker 1: to turn this into a metric system a system of metrices,
Speaker 1: is that, right? Metrices? Okay, they wanted to quantify it
Speaker 1: very much so because they're, like you said, they're very
Speaker 1: very serious about this. Right. So, Um, let's say, let's
Speaker 1: take psychological well being. They they took these guiding principles
Speaker 1: and then they broke them down by indicators. Right, So
Speaker 1: you have an indicator like the prevalence of UM negative
Speaker 1: emotions like jealousy or frustration or selfishness, the prevalence of
Speaker 1: positive emotions like UM, generosity, compassion, calmness. Right, and um
Speaker 1: that those right there are indicators that when you compile
Speaker 1: them all together in a survey, you have an impression
Speaker 1: of the psychological well being of the household that's being
Speaker 1: taken in the census. Right. Could you imagine our country
Speaker 1: ever doing anything remotely close to this? Know? And the
Speaker 1: reason why is because we just like the Boutaneese recently said,
Speaker 1: we're going to collectively agree that we want to focus
Speaker 1: our our national focus on happiness the the US A
Speaker 1: long time ago, actually around World War two, when the
Speaker 1: g MP was first introduced. Um, we made a collective
Speaker 1: agreement that we want to focus on materialism, money stuff
Speaker 1: that's how we measure our um our well being in
Speaker 1: this country. And that's not to say that it's any
Speaker 1: worse or better, um than Bhutan's idea. It's just radically different.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it is radically different is
Speaker 1: because in this country we don't tech, We don't we
Speaker 1: don't tend to think of happiness as coming from within.
Speaker 1: It is like behavioral psychologists believe, or a lot of
Speaker 1: them do. It's the spons of physiological response to an
Speaker 1: external stimuli. Right. So we've said, yeah, so we've said
Speaker 1: we're going to go for the materialism route, and this
Speaker 1: is what's going to dictate our policies. How much money
Speaker 1: do you have. If you've got a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: you can go get your car and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's figure out how to make a bunch of
Speaker 1: money for everybody in this country. Right. Um. And even
Speaker 1: if you on a an individual level don't agree with
Speaker 1: the concept of materialism, if you're in the US, you
Speaker 1: tacitly agree with it just by going to work every day.
Speaker 1: The whole, the whole point of most of your waking
Speaker 1: life is accumulation of money, right, or you're looked at
Speaker 1: as a freak of nature. If you are one of
Speaker 1: those people who decided to drop out and go live
Speaker 1: off the grid and so they're on seed in the mountains. Sure,
Speaker 1: you're a weirdo in this country if you do that,
Speaker 1: or if you die after three months, they make a
Speaker 1: movie about you and a book The bear guy. Who
Speaker 1: I thought you talk about Timothy Treadwell, the grizzly Bear. No,
Speaker 1: I was talking about Christopher McCandless. Okay, Sure, from into
Speaker 1: the Wild thing similar, similar thing the bear. I thought
Speaker 1: that was actually about a bear. No, Timothy Treadwell was
Speaker 1: as a bear enthusiast who went to live among the
Speaker 1: bears and was killed by a bear. Was killed Neaton
Speaker 1: by bear. What a way to go. So, Chuck, let's
Speaker 1: get back to how how Bhutan has made this quantified? Right? Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've got uh. We were talking about psychological well
Speaker 1: being and then all these different indicators. One of the
Speaker 1: other things that they've decided to do is to take
Speaker 1: um objective data as well as subjective data to evaluate
Speaker 1: just how much worth something has. Right um. I was
Speaker 1: reading pretty much a breakdown of the gross national happiness
Speaker 1: system that Bhutan has by the the Center for Boutan
Speaker 1: Studies it's pretty impressive. It is um and what they've
Speaker 1: what they've said is so you've got like crime. Right
Speaker 1: in the US, we have time statistics, and then the
Speaker 1: FBI issues the uniform Crime Report every year, right, and
Speaker 1: it gets kind of granular, like um, crime perpetrated by race,
Speaker 1: by gender, by age, what kind of crime? It's real granular,
Speaker 1: it does. But really, if you think about it, it's
Speaker 1: just a statistic like I shoot you you die. That's
Speaker 1: one homicide, right, right, So what the botanis do is
Speaker 1: they still have these crime statistics. They use crime data,
Speaker 1: but they take it a step further through these surveys
Speaker 1: and say how safe do you feel? Okay, I guess
Speaker 1: that's one of the perks of having a country of
Speaker 1: six people. Sure, I guess the census goes a lot
Speaker 1: faster um. But but so that one, right, So the
Speaker 1: crime statistics taken with how safe the population self reports feeling,
Speaker 1: that would be part of community vitality. Right. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense, it does, doesn't it. It's weird that it
Speaker 1: makes sense because really it's the op is it of
Speaker 1: the premise behind gross domestic product or gross national product,
Speaker 1: which is all material but it uses a lot of
Speaker 1: the same UM model, but rather than money, it's going
Speaker 1: for happiness. You know, I think that boggling. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think it's the only way they could have pulled this
Speaker 1: off is if if they did use like a GDP
Speaker 1: model instead of just kind of willing really throwing some
Speaker 1: questions out there about happiness. Right, they actually said that
Speaker 1: in this breakdown of Gross National Happiness that like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a great idea, but we had to quantify it
Speaker 1: or else it was just going to be useless. So
Speaker 1: they really went to town on it. Right. So what
Speaker 1: they've done is take these nine guiding principles, right and
Speaker 1: dimensions dimensions that's rights, and they they've they've broken them
Speaker 1: down into all these different indicators, right that can be
Speaker 1: UM subjectively reported on. And they've established a threshold, just
Speaker 1: like we use for poverty lines. Right, So in the US,
Speaker 1: what is it If you're an individual and you make
Speaker 1: like some some ridiculously low amount, like thirteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, you're you're below the poverty line. But if
Speaker 1: you make thirteen thousand and one dollars, you're above the
Speaker 1: poverty line. Um. They they created thresholds UM for achievement
Speaker 1: is how they put it UM to where let's say, uh,
Speaker 1: we'll go back to a scale just to make it easier.
Speaker 1: On a scale of one to ten. UM four is
Speaker 1: the is the threshold for UM general psycho psychological well being? Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have if you say yes to X
Speaker 1: number of questions on these indicators and then they add
Speaker 1: them all up and your score is five, you've surpassed
Speaker 1: the threshold, but you're not put down as a five,
Speaker 1: put down as a four. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: What they're what they're doing in that is that they
Speaker 1: have chosen to focus on building up any deficits that
Speaker 1: turn up in gross national happiness, uh, as opposed to
Speaker 1: UM touting how happy that the happiest people actually are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their goal is to to be a happier country, right,
Speaker 1: So have a lot of poor people there too, Like
Speaker 1: they're really being hard on themselves here, Like their gross
Speaker 1: national happiness the most it could ever possibly be. If
Speaker 1: every single person in the country is happy at the
Speaker 1: same time, is one. Everything else is negative. Okay, So
Speaker 1: then they go focus on why it's negative and they
Speaker 1: break it down much the same way like the FBI
Speaker 1: breaks down crime like by gender, by region, by um,
Speaker 1: by age, and then they can say, all right, what
Speaker 1: can we do to make these people happier? What's lacking?
Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying. It's it's I don't I hate.
Speaker 1: I hesitate to use the word crazy because I don't
Speaker 1: want anyone to get the impression that I'm I'm casting
Speaker 1: any doubt or dispersion on it. This is crazy, is yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: especially considering where they are. I mentioned the poverty line
Speaker 1: or you did of their country lives below the poverty line, right,
Speaker 1: but in a Buddhist country, that doesn't necessarily mean these
Speaker 1: people are unhappy. Well no, because they only have an
Speaker 1: unemployment rate of two point five, so the material is
Speaker 1: not that important. They're working, and I saw there They're
Speaker 1: big exports are there in Their industrial exports are cement,
Speaker 1: that's like their biggest industrial exports, and then wood products
Speaker 1: and then agriculture is their big deal with rice and
Speaker 1: corn and stuff like that. Okay, so what we've just
Speaker 1: talked about is that they have a thirties something percent
Speaker 1: live below the poverty line. But it's a Buddhist country,
Speaker 1: so they're big into the rejection of materialism, so that
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter or does it. One of the other
Speaker 1: things that the Gross National Happiness model that they've come
Speaker 1: up with serves as is a is a a framework
Speaker 1: for accountability for the government, right for the government's like, well,
Speaker 1: we just all reject materialism, so um, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you're below the poverty line. If they
Speaker 1: enough people start self reporting that they're actually unhappy, and
Speaker 1: all these people happen to be falling below the poverty
Speaker 1: line that's published for you know, Buddha and everybody to see,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you can point to
Speaker 1: the government like, you guys are wrong, you're making some
Speaker 1: incorrect assumptions, and we need to fix this over here
Speaker 1: by making more money. If that's yeah, yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you're dedicated to the happiness collectively and individually of your population,
Speaker 1: then yes, it's going to turn up on this gross
Speaker 1: National Happiness um economic indicator or indicator, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: gonna need to be fixed or else you've just been
Speaker 1: blowing smoke up everybody's Uh, you know what their real
Speaker 1: GDP was? Actually I checked that out per capita. What
Speaker 1: would you guess if America is forty six and change,
Speaker 1: what would you think it would be there in Bhuddan
Speaker 1: three dollars per year, Yeah, five thousand two d okay
Speaker 1: per capita GDP. I can see that. So they still
Speaker 1: I guess that's a world fact that you have to have.
Speaker 1: They still have the GDP. Right, that's an excellent point, Chuck.
Speaker 1: The reason that they they instituted gross national Happiness is
Speaker 1: because they I think the leaders kind of saw the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall, like, you you can only remain
Speaker 1: shut off for so long. And this is very much
Speaker 1: a shut off kingdom. It's high up in the mountains
Speaker 1: between China and India, and they have yes very much,
Speaker 1: so they've isolated themselves. But the internet came in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, TV showed up in and it brought with
Speaker 1: it these Western influences. So what the leaders said, rather
Speaker 1: than you can't have TV, you can't have internet, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll enter the world stage, but we're gonna do
Speaker 1: it on our own terms. And this is this is
Speaker 1: how we're going to applaud it. So let's get to
Speaker 1: the point there, chuckers as to whether or not Bhutan's
Speaker 1: actually onto something like there there's this is an age
Speaker 1: old question like is money more important than happiness. Can
Speaker 1: money buy happiness? Let's talk about some some studies, not
Speaker 1: necessarily once conducted in Bhutan, but just in general, like
Speaker 1: does money provide happiness? I think if you were just
Speaker 1: to talk about Bhutan now, you'd be uh, you'd find
Speaker 1: out pretty quick that five thousand, two hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: year that they is their GDP. They're probably pretty happy.
Speaker 1: And if you talk to your average American they might
Speaker 1: not be as happy. That's just a guess, agreed. But
Speaker 1: the g n H will turn that up sure eventually, right,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll turn the frown upside down. Right, Actually, check
Speaker 1: the boutanies. Census takers aren't the only people who go
Speaker 1: around asking people if they're happy. I know you're talking
Speaker 1: about who am I talking about? The World Value Survey?
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, they ask people how happy they are,
Speaker 1: and they've been doing it for a long time since actually,
Speaker 1: and they usually ask about three fifty thousand people, uh
Speaker 1: in ninety seven countries. And they asked too much country.
Speaker 1: They asked that many their whole um survey populations. Um.
Speaker 1: They they asked two questions. You ready, taking all things together,
Speaker 1: would you say you are very happy? Rather happy, not
Speaker 1: very happy, not at all happy. That's one question. And
Speaker 1: then secondly, all things considered, how satisfied are you with
Speaker 1: your life as a whole these days? And that's it
Speaker 1: to two questions survey, right, and then they ranked countries.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, the happiest country on the
Speaker 1: planet was Denmark. I could, I could believe that the
Speaker 1: US ranks six, right, but if you look according at
Speaker 1: the CIA, if you look at um per capita g
Speaker 1: d P, the US was I think number eight, number five,
Speaker 1: and another number eight in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 1: then Denmark was number thirty. So they're the happiest country,
Speaker 1: but they don't make nearly as much money as the US.
Speaker 1: No correlation there, but not necessarily. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism of the World Value Survey um number one. Somebody
Speaker 1: pointed out number one, uh that you how do you
Speaker 1: translate happiness from we? We? You and I can't even
Speaker 1: describe what real happiness is? Necessarily we could possibly anecdotally,
Speaker 1: but it's so subjective. Number one, How can you and I,
Speaker 1: who have so much in common, not established what happiness is?
Speaker 1: That that you can also spread it out over ninety
Speaker 1: seven countries and all these different societies and groups within it.
Speaker 1: So that's that's number one. Um number two. I read
Speaker 1: an article that pointed out that, yeah, Denmark um is
Speaker 1: the happiest country in the world. It also leads the
Speaker 1: world in per capita alcoholism and suicide. Really, yeah, I
Speaker 1: understand the alcohol part. Yeah, suicide, No, it doesn't, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's becoming evident. Just what a responsibility, what a task
Speaker 1: Bhutan is taking on its own shoulders, isn't it. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: happiness is really tough to quantify, and they've done a
Speaker 1: great job trying to figure that out. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: know they do the studies, and you pointed one in
Speaker 1: your article, your fine, fine article about didn't I thought
Speaker 1: it was okay? Uh about um? They always study lottery winners. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love this, and they always compare them to amputees,
Speaker 1: which I just I find odds. No, it was just
Speaker 1: a very famous one that started it. Is that what
Speaker 1: it is, it's like, is happiness relative? Well, and then
Speaker 1: what do they find out that after the initial joy
Speaker 1: of the lottery war off the people kind of generally,
Speaker 1: and the same with the ampute they generally go back
Speaker 1: to where they were before. Yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: it as like a line of horizontal line. Uh, and
Speaker 1: the event happens at the same time. Somebody loses their
Speaker 1: leg and another person loses their wins the lottery. The
Speaker 1: lottery winner goes up, the ampute goes down. But after
Speaker 1: three years they both go back to that same line,
Speaker 1: which is kind of startling if you think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you also made the point about money, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a really good point. Is dichotomous. So money
Speaker 1: can bring many things. Money can bring happiness and cool
Speaker 1: stuff and security, and it can also, uh be the
Speaker 1: the evil in your life. It can be I mean
Speaker 1: that that security. You've got financial security, but maybe you're
Speaker 1: a little more worried that you're you know, house is
Speaker 1: going to be invaded, right for during a robbery or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The point with pursuing happiness that I think the Boutanees
Speaker 1: are hip on is that happiness only brings happiness. Good point. Um.
Speaker 1: There was another study by a couple of guys from
Speaker 1: Princeton at all um and Uh they basically use something
Speaker 1: called day reconstruction method, which is self reporting. But you know,
Speaker 1: self reporting it flies in the soft social sciences. But
Speaker 1: that's about it. Um. But basically they asked people to,
Speaker 1: um write down their experiences that from the previous day.
Speaker 1: I can do that over a set period of time, right,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see mine from like yesterday, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're in a bad mood yesterday. No, just
Speaker 1: were you drunk? No, they wanted their charting your mood
Speaker 1: or what you did and how it correspondents. I think both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd left. We should do that. You want there, No,
Speaker 1: I don't either. Um. What these guys found was that
Speaker 1: when you when you ask people to report on their
Speaker 1: mood right as it happens or the day after it's happened,
Speaker 1: and then you evaluated by income, they found that actually
Speaker 1: money did, indeed, um bring happiness to a certain extent, right, Right.
Speaker 1: So the point is is, I think people who made
Speaker 1: under twenty thousand dollars a year are actually less happy
Speaker 1: than people who make a hundred thousand or more. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a no brainer to think about it.
Speaker 1: It rans in the strife and struggle you're you have
Speaker 1: in your daily life. If you're making that's what it lasts. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even happy people, I think can be beaten down by finances.
Speaker 1: Generally happy people. Sure, yeah, um, but the the uh,
Speaker 1: what they did find was that when you get to
Speaker 1: a fifty thousand to eighty nine thousand, that segment was
Speaker 1: virtually identical people who made over a hundred thousand, which
Speaker 1: is kind of significant because there's a there's a substantial
Speaker 1: difference between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand. So what
Speaker 1: what they've concluded is that money does bring happiness to
Speaker 1: a certain extent by possibly by satisfying um our needs.
Speaker 1: But after that it loses a lot of its value
Speaker 1: or a lot of the happiness that can bring once
Speaker 1: it reaches a certain point, once those needs are satisfied. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, when I worked in l A, I worked
Speaker 1: with a lot of rich people, obviously in the film industry,
Speaker 1: and it never really hit home to me until I
Speaker 1: left that I was always jealous of the amount of money,
Speaker 1: Like these commercial directors have make insane amounts of money,
Speaker 1: like twenty tho dollars a day for their stupid TV commercials.
Speaker 1: I'm unimpressed because you've already told me that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just amazing how much money they make. But you you
Speaker 1: grow your lifestyle to fit your salary to a large degree.
Speaker 1: Not always, my friend, you were talking about the hedonic treadmill.
Speaker 1: So basically, they're uh, come on, have you heard those
Speaker 1: two words put together before? Yeah, all the time. Don't
Speaker 1: you see my T shirt? It's so yeah, that's right there,
Speaker 1: silly drawing. I thought so too. Um. You grow to
Speaker 1: fit your your your your lifestyle grows to fit your salary.
Speaker 1: So if you make twenty dollars a day, your expenses,
Speaker 1: or let's say thirty dollars a month, your expenses are
Speaker 1: gonna be you know, they're gonna match that. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this, Well, no, I know what you mean. Let's
Speaker 1: say uh, let's say an example. I've read in an
Speaker 1: article from the San Diego Union Tribune, a sterling article
Speaker 1: actually on happiness. It's called pursuing happiness. Um. This guy
Speaker 1: makes the example of um winning the lottery and moving
Speaker 1: to uh Rancho Santa Fe, which I take is one
Speaker 1: of the nicer suburbs in San Diego. I guess okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that when you do that, you go from
Speaker 1: the how did I get this lucky type of happiness
Speaker 1: to living among similar wealth, so it becomes your normal
Speaker 1: everyday life wears off another argumentum against money bringing happiness
Speaker 1: is that a lot of times it leads to um
Speaker 1: poor choices. Apparently about forty of our happiness if you
Speaker 1: look at it in a pie graph. Um ten percent
Speaker 1: is life circumstances, fifty is um jenes genetic, they believe,
Speaker 1: And then is our our choices that the happiness or
Speaker 1: unhappiness or choices bring us. And one of the points
Speaker 1: is like, okay, let's say, um, commuting is almost across
Speaker 1: the board like one of our least favorite things to
Speaker 1: do as human beings. Right, Um, But you make a
Speaker 1: bunch more money, so you move out to the suburbs
Speaker 1: in a into a bigger house. But you've also just
Speaker 1: doubled or tripled your commute. But then you buy the
Speaker 1: BMW seven series, see your drive as a lot sweeter.
Speaker 1: But then it costs for the tune up. Sure, it's all,
Speaker 1: it's all. It's all comes out in the wash. You know.
Speaker 1: The point I think that you and I are inevitably
Speaker 1: going towards stumbling, towards faltering um is that you just
Speaker 1: shouldn't take money quite so seriously, that's good. I find
Speaker 1: it interesting. And we've set up a thing in this
Speaker 1: country where you can never go backward. It's all about
Speaker 1: going forward with the Peter principle. Yeah, well with money
Speaker 1: though too, Like when um like in a divorce case,
Speaker 1: you always hear the whether it's a husband or the
Speaker 1: wife that's rich and the one that's asking for the
Speaker 1: spousal support. The point has always made while I've got
Speaker 1: this lifestyle now and then I need to get the
Speaker 1: forty dollars a month from you to to stay at
Speaker 1: this lifestyle. The thought of going back is just unthinkable
Speaker 1: in this country. It is money wise, if you think
Speaker 1: about it. Stockbrokers don't don't um tend to throw themselves
Speaker 1: out of windows when they make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: It's only when they lose it. Right. But I'm I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's drastic. But you think why, I mean, why
Speaker 1: can't you just you know, all right, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: a job that pays less and I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: little less. Some people make this choice, you know what
Speaker 1: I think some people do, and I would like to
Speaker 1: hear from them, anybody who's made that decision right us
Speaker 1: and tell us are you happy and what you did?
Speaker 1: But the courts support it with that divorce thing. They think, well,
Speaker 1: now you've got this lifestyle and you must stay at
Speaker 1: that level. You cannot drop your lifestyle whatsoever. Right, And
Speaker 1: that is that definitely does UM underscore or that social
Speaker 1: agreement that materialism is what we're into. Yeah, yeah, well, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, since I said materialism is what we're into,
Speaker 1: that means that I should tell you to go to
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. You can type in gross
Speaker 1: national happiness in our handy search bar, and you might
Speaker 1: also want to read another article on the site. UM
Speaker 1: can any by happiness, right, which means what chuck? Actually,
Speaker 1: I got just one more quick thing. You know, there
Speaker 1: was an earthquake totally. There was an earthquake in Bhutan
Speaker 1: on Monday. Did you know that. I didn't. Yeah, everybody, okay,
Speaker 1: six point three they've twelve people at least are dead
Speaker 1: and wrecked a bunch of you know, ancient monasteries and yeah,
Speaker 1: which are like built on the mountain side. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I imagine they came tumbling down. Just very sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is sad. So I just want to say, hello,
Speaker 1: if we have any fans in Bhuton. We might have
Speaker 1: one fan of Bhutan. Yeah, the internet, it is all right?
Speaker 1: Well with that sad news. I guess it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. It is listener mail Josh. And this
Speaker 1: is uh just a couple of quick shoutouts. This came
Speaker 1: from Amelia and Jerry thought it was a good idea
Speaker 1: to plug it, so we will. Um. It's a website
Speaker 1: called free rice dot com. And apparently what you do
Speaker 1: there is you go online at this website and you
Speaker 1: answer vocabulary questions and it's like a game. You play
Speaker 1: these games where you answer tribute questions and uh participate
Speaker 1: and when you get these questions right, they donate rice
Speaker 1: to the needy around the world. So it's like a
Speaker 1: little interactive way I guess of getting people involved and uh,
Speaker 1: ten grains of rice per correct answer. And um, the
Speaker 1: website today said over sixty eight billion grains of rice
Speaker 1: have been donated today. Do you imagine the poor slob
Speaker 1: whose job it is to count out every single one
Speaker 1: of those grains? May be symbolic, maybe not, do you
Speaker 1: think now you're you're staring blankly. So thanks Amelia for that,
Speaker 1: and that is a worthy cause indeed. And then I
Speaker 1: wanted to give a special shout out to Ben, our
Speaker 1: listener from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Ben and
Speaker 1: I've been writing. He, at the age of twenty, was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with a form of lukemi that I cannot pronounce.
Speaker 1: He said, it's evidently the good kind, even though after
Speaker 1: hearing what he's been going through, it didn't sound like it. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were gonna have a bone marrow transplant for Ben,
Speaker 1: but they could not find a match in eleven million
Speaker 1: person database, and so he has been approved. His chemotherapy
Speaker 1: um sorry, radiation worked and he's going to have an
Speaker 1: umbilical cord blood transplant. And he's been traveling I think
Speaker 1: he said something like eighty miles each way every day
Speaker 1: for like a two minute radiation. And he's been listening
Speaker 1: to our podcast, which is why he wrote in and
Speaker 1: that's been helping him out. And we just and Ben's
Speaker 1: a really cool guy, dude. His attitude is like leaps
Speaker 1: and bounds ahead of ours. His outlook on life isn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was one of those perspective shots where Ben is
Speaker 1: just and he's like, oh, man, don't feel bad for me,
Speaker 1: because I told him I felt really awful about it.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, I didn't picture this is my life,
Speaker 1: but it's what I've been dealt and I'm dealing with
Speaker 1: it and everything's everything's gonna be okay. And uh so
Speaker 1: he was a proof for the Uh he was admitted
Speaker 1: last Wednesday for the transplant and it's a six week
Speaker 1: hospital stay and then a two year recovery period. And
Speaker 1: and he said that, uh, the one thing that he's
Speaker 1: loved as our podcast and hydromorphone he's become fond of,
Speaker 1: which is uh what the pain killer they've been giving him? Okay,
Speaker 1: And he said that he found out later heroin addics
Speaker 1: use it as a substitute because has similar effects. Heroin
Speaker 1: addicts will use anything as a substitute. Sure, and so Ben,
Speaker 1: we hope you're well. I hope you're listening. Our thoughts
Speaker 1: are with you obviously and calling for you. Please keep
Speaker 1: us posted. Huh yeah, he will cool. Will you keep
Speaker 1: me posted? Will you? I will? You kind of have
Speaker 1: a lockdown on the information that comes in. I do
Speaker 1: I control the information. Remember, we want to hear from
Speaker 1: you if you decided to take a giant step backward
Speaker 1: out of the rat race and um, how your life's going.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
Speaker 1: the House of works dot com home page. Brought to
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