04-03-2012, 05:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-03-2012, 05:56 PM by FireIceTalon.)
Studies elsewhere have shown that money doesn't buy happiness, and I believe there is a co-relation there on why the Scandinavian countries are happier than America. In America, we tend to value income and material goods more, in Europe you guys value vacation and leisure time more. This is one of the primary cultural differences between us. The larger social welfare state in many European countries and the hyper-capitalist society in America are both causes and reflections of these differences as well, as far as I can see. I am with the Euro's personally, I have little interest in material items for the most part, and would much prefer to spend more time with my family, traveling, or engaging in more intellectual discourse instead of who discussing who won the latest American Idol, whether or not Lindsey Lohan is a lesbian, or buying the biggest gas guzzling SUV possible. But that's just me. Mill's lower and higher pleasures are at work here to some extent, I think, although I am by no means a Utilitarianist 
Anyway, check this article, it's a pretty interesting read:
Money doesn't buy happiness
Anyway, check this article, it's a pretty interesting read:
Money doesn't buy happiness
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)