So you’re, like, poor…and someone comes along and gives you $10,000 which you won’t have to pay back. Does that make you… happy?
Well–yeah! You bet! According to a $2 million study by a research team at the University of British Columbia (https://phys.org/news/2022-11-cash-rich-poor-happiness.html).
Of course nobody came back after the money was all spent and asked, “Now how happy are you?” Was the money spent wisely, to lasting good effect? Or was it frittered away on lottery tickets and beer parties? Anyway, the study says “transferring money from rich people to poor people can increase the level of happiness reported by the poor people who receive the money.”
You don’t say! Well blow me down!
Ooh-ooh! Is that a government policy I hear, trickling down from the mountaintop? What if we just kept on giving free money to the poor? Wouldn’t they be happy all the time? And God forbid that such a government should ever fail to be re-elected! That’d be hell to pay.
Two million bucks they pay to find out people like it when you give them free money.
Let’s build more universities!
Actually, people who live on handouts tend not to be happy. They have a burst of euphoria when they first get the money, but then they become dissatisfied, and then fearful when they start coming to the end of the money, and then helpless and even more miserable than before when the money finally runs out. Free money is a drug, with the same arc of reactions, including built-up tolerance so that more and more is required to build the high, and then worse and worse withdrawal pains when the drug wears off.
They didn’t revisit any of these people after they’d spent all the money.