Lindsay Lohan appears to be doing great

She'll be lucky to live as long as Brad Renfro.

 

She doesn't have the kind of money most assume she has. She got the bulk of her big paydays before she was 18, which means her parents likely wasted it. She also probably has only had one or two big paydays during her career since she only worked a few times between when she was considered the next big thing and the next starlet to die before she's 30.

It didn't take her long to get a reputation as a pain in the ass to work with, so she's worked very, very little in the last five years and most of the times she has worked are ensemble or independent films where she probably worked for scale.

 

She's enough of a name where she can still earn more money than most of us will never see. What she needs is to be sent to one of those military-style prisons and have her attitude broken down, then rebuilt back up.

 

Money doesn't make you happy or emotionally healthy, once you have enough to have your most basic needs met without fear. We all know it on an intellectual level, but it's still hard not to think "but if I had *that* much money..."

 

RickSocrates strikes again!

 

WRONG!!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ifI7wKHXFGL9t7-2qeGhO1th6BCA

 

I don't think that's a "WRONG!!" That link supports the assertion.

There is clearly a plateau at which more money does not mean more happiness. That number is closely tied to having basic needs met comfortably, and it is far, far lower than the levels of wealth we'd all wish for if we had the opportunity. Different studies have placed it as low as $12,000 and as high as $75,000, but the principle is clear. Having movie-star money does not make you happier.

 

Being able to have things I previously could not afford would make me extremely happy. And most of the things I'd like to have, but can't afford, go far beyond basic needs.

I don't need RickSocrates to know that.

 

You, like every other human being on the planet, are not very good at identifying things that would make you happy.

Even more importantly, we are astonishingly bad at knowing how *much* happiness things will bring us.

A shiny new whatever will us a little happier for a little while, but not for as long or as deeply as we imagine before we have it.

Since I'm just a humble scrapbooker, here's a link to a Harvard sociologist explaining the idea:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/interview_gilbert.html

 

What makes you happy, RickSocrates? I'm dying to know.

 

Correcting and admonishing people on a message board.

 

Being the "That's a common misconception" guy that everybody hates.