Reading Analysis of 'Economics of Happiness' from the Aspen Ideas Festival

What did you find interesting or uninteresting about the piece? Was there something that seemed intuitive or counterintuitive?
Two of the most interesting and intuitive points in the video were made by Robert H. Frank. Firstly, he suggested that money can buy happiness, but we just don't purchase all of the right things. Perhaps this is due to financial planning or the desire to save our earnings. Money-wise people don't spend frivolously, but their happiness might know no bounds if they did. The second assertion Frank makes that caught my attention was that economists of the future will regard Charles Darwin, not Adam Smith, as the father of economics. Because economics is a social science, this actually makes perfect sense. While Adam Smith will always be credited for turning social behaviors into economic theories, Charles Darwin was the original studier of human tendencies. After all, economics is a social science.

Discussion Questions
Justin Wolfers says that money can't buy love. For many people, however, love or being loved may equate to happiness. What do you think about this? Will wealth and happiness ever correlate for these people?

If studies and graphs show that people become happier as their wealth increases exponentially, is the opposite also true? Does poverty cause depression? Does one have to have a personal experience with wealth in order to make poverty so unbearable? Explain.

Annotation
This video further elaborates upon the Easterlin Paradox. Both featured economists essentially convey the difficulty with quantifying happiness. Surveys upon surveys had to be conducted to obtain the data expressed in the graphs and charts in the movie. As Wolfers explains, the questions that were asked of people changed over time. This directly affected the accuracy of the responses. Issues highlighted here further emphasize the problems that arise in social sciences because people and their habits are riddled with variables.