Enich's Amcon Thoughts: I'll have to admit, going into lecture yesterday I was skeptical about how economics and happiness could correlate. When we were discussing,...
My response: What if utility = happiness? That is, what if everything in life is directed toward, at a minimum, avoiding pain and in the best case, securing the opposite which is pleasure understood as the basis of happiness? Then economists might help us to understand the factors that contribute to this goal, not only by their analysis of actual, tangible goods (e.g. cars, clothing, and cake) but also by the application of their analysis to intangible goods (e.g. justice, love, security, and the like). In some instances these intangible goods require financial transactions, but even when that is not so, there are costs of some sort which might be time or willingness to forfeit a certain amount of status.
Disclaimer: This chart was NOT part of our discussion or of Becker's comments. But it does represent an effort to consider the relationship between something financial and happiness on a macro-scale.
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