Americans are materially wealthy relative to most of the rest of the world. I would suspect (without having any sort of citation to support it) that, when compared to Americans, most of the people who have ever lived in any time and in any country have known nowhere near the standard of living represented by a $60K annual income in the U.S. today. If that assumption is true, and if the premise of this piece is also correct, this would mean that most of the people who have ever lived throughout all of humanity's existence have been unhappy with their lives. That would seem to me a dubious proposition.
I think that neither money nor happiness is the key but rather contentment. Life dishes up the good and bad to us all, and we often can't do anything about that, but learning to be content with what we have is an achievable and worthwhile goal for all - and also a better measure than money can ever be of whether we have lived our lives well.
I think that neither money nor happiness is the key but rather contentment. Life dishes up the good and bad to us all, and we often can't do anything about that, but learning to be content with what we have is an achievable and worthwhile goal for all - and also a better measure than money can ever be of whether we have lived our lives well.