Are We Getting Happy Yet?

SAN FRANCISCO--Can money buy you happiness? Now a Los Angeles Times article says that after rigorous calculations, some economists have concluded that increasing the frequency of sex from once a month to once a week brings just as much happiness as getting an extra $50,000 a year.

If that amount of sex is equal to that much money, it's probably why Warren Buffett had to give away his billions to charity. Earning more than $50,000 a minute just sitting there must've been delicious, but exhausting. Can't be good for someone his age. Now, for someone my age it'd be different.

In fact, I was hoping someone would let me experiment and find out -- once and for all -- if money really can't buy you joy. With just, say, $10 million from Buffett or Bill Gates, I'd be willing to be a lab rat and risk finding only despair, so no one else has to suffer at the end of a super-mega-lotto-jackpot-big-win experience.

But I digress. The once-a-week-sex = $50,000-a-year equation has unintended consequences. It's skewed in favor of the wealthy. It doesn't work, for example, for low-end sex workers who have to do it several times a day but aren't necessarily happier or flush with $50,000 more a year as a result. I can see how it works for the rich, though.

Take Rush Limbaugh, who was detained by Customs agents at Palm Beach airport for carrying Viagra not prescribed to his name, which gives new meaning to the term, the hard right.

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