The Effect of Wealth On the Human Soul— Part Deux.

“There is an obvious chicken-and-egg question to ask here.  But it is beginning to seem that the problem isn’t that the kind of people who wind up on the pleasant side of inequality suffer from some moral disability that gives them a market edge.  The problem is caused by the inequality itself: It triggers a chemical reaction in the privileged few.  It tilts their brains.  It causes them to be less likely to care about anyone but themselves or to experience the moral sentiments needed to be a decent citizen.

Or even a happy one.  Not long ago, an enterprising professor at Harvard Business School named Mike Norton persuaded a big investment bank to let him survey the bank’s rich clients.  (The poor people in the survey were millionaires.)  In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: A rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness.  That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to such an interesting insight.  He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment.  Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier.  ‘All of them said they needed two to three times more than they had to feel happier,’ says Norton.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: The happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have.  To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception.  ‘While spending money on oneself does nothing for one’s happiness,’ says Norton, ‘spending it on others increases happiness.’

If the Harvard Business School is now making a home for research exposing the folly of a life devoted to endless material ambition, something in the world has changed— or is changing.  And I think it is: There is a growing awareness that the yawning gap between rich and poor is no longer a matter of simple justice but also the enemy of economic success and human happiness.  It’s not just bad for the poor.  It’s also bad for the rich.  It’s funny, when you think about it, how many rich people don’t know this.  But they are not idiots; they can learn.  Many even possess the self-awareness to correct for whatever tricks their brain chemicals seek to play on them; some of them already do it.  When you control a lot more than your share of the Froot Loops, there really isn’t much doubt about what you should do with them, for your own good.  You just need to be reminded....”  Indeed, we do.

“Do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” {Heb. 13:16}.  “God is ever delighted by sacrifices like this, God is always satisfied by the fruit of a generous heart” {RR Exp}.  Doesn’t get much clearer than this, does it?

— excerpted from an article by Michael Lewis originally appearing in The New Republic, taken from The Week magazine’s Dec. 31st, 2014 edition.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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