Argumentative Essay: Can Money Lead To True Happiness?

If you hate Mondays, maybe the day itself is not the problem, but the job is. Indeed, it appears to be difficult to find an enjoyable job, as for 90% of the workers, their job causes frustration. The essay prompt tackles the famous debates if money can lead to real happiness. Through the simplified scenario of two workers: one with a mid-level salary, enjoying their job, versus one with a high-level salary, hating their job, opens itself to several points of view. Someone will achieve a higher level of overall happiness when earning a mid-salary in a job that they enjoy, rather than a high-income in a job that one hates, because of: happiness compared to money and materialistic values, the overall health benefits and finally, happiness as a essential tool to be successful in the career.

Through pop culture and mainstream media, we believe that the more money we make, the happier we are. This has developed from countless generations of the lower income being treated badly by the wealthy and the

Japan even has a word for, “death by overwork”, called karoshi. 10,000 cases of suicide due to work-related stress occurred at its peak in 19999. This is an extreme case, but work-related stress can also be found in the United States, where workers who were unhappy in their jobs were 32% more likely to die of a heart attack. On the other side, a study published in the Lancet, found that doing a job which you enjoy and gives you a sense of purpose were 30 percent less likely to die. Even though these two studies explored mortality rates, there are also countless studies of the general medical side-effects of exposing your body to lots of stress. So based on these studies, one can conclude, that working in a mid-salary job that you enjoy will most likely lead to a better overall health, than when working in a high-salary job which you