I've been seeing and reading a lot lately about social psycology research polling in news and books about how increasing your income makes you happier up to about US$50,000 per year, but beyond that you don't get much happier for large increases in income. I know there are plenty of rich people piling out money to dancers and escorts, but overall aren't much happier than the guy that goes to the SC every couple weeks and spends $100. I've also read in some strip club autobiographies that the richer a guy is, the weirder his tastes seem to be. And that no matter how much you make, an overspender is an overspender. Then there are the studies of big lottery winners who end up overweight and depressed a couple years later, and of course that rich people still commit suicide. What this suggests is once you have enough to comfortably survive and get a few perks once in a while, anything above that gives increased pleasure only as a short term buzz, and you level off to about where you were before, perhaps with buyers remorse.
Then again, most people are usually looking to get richer, no matter what they make, which suggests people want to be happier and think money will help.
I don't currently know anything about making a large amount over $50,000, but I'm always curious about this commodity we call happiness and thought that here where the motto is "where's the money, honey", I'd like to see what it means to people.
I had an interesting case where I was in a strip club and a dancer (edit: who in this particular case was also a prostitute) said I could rent her for "whatever, sex if you want". No big revelation there (edit: I was not suprised there was a prostitute in the strip club), but I asked her if she wasn't making enough money as a dancer and she said her dream was to buy this car she saw in a movie that was one of a kind and she would do whatever she could to get it. I just have to imagine her two weeks after she gets this car and what she is thinking then.



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I know plenty of 30 and 40 year olds who act like fucking high schoolers. heh

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