Economic Mobility and Happiness

After reading Arthur C. Brooks' "The Left's 'Inequality' Obsession", I am only further convinced that the amount of money a person has does not affect his or her way of life nearly as much as his or her quality of life. In the article, Brooks uses reported results of surveys of people claiming how happy they were in given circumstances.

Reading this article also strengthened Charles Murray's argument in his piece "What's so Bad about Being Poor?", where he compares the happiness of poor people in America to those living in huts in the ricelands of Thailand. Those in Thailand had a higher quality of life, so despite having much less money than the poor people of America, they were almost all much happier than those living in poverty here. And in the surveys conducted, a majority of the participants said they were much happier knowing that their families had a chance to move up economic ranks in this country. So with that information, the most positive and useful piece of help I can leave everyone with is: