Not quite sure what the point of this article was - a few sources on some of the stats might help

"This lack of materialism is bad for us - how's the economy going to grow and out national happiness increase if we don't get out there and buy, impelled by the feeling that our neighbours at sneering at us for our tiny TVs and last-year cars? So make it your aim in 2014 to consume like there's no tomorrow."

Thus spake Satan!

(Graham, I know you regularly get David Singer to write for OLO, but I was not aware that you have such good connections down under to have the boss write us in person)

The reason why the world is so poor is the fractional reserve system of banking. Banks create loans that are 10 times their deposits and give special deals to their mates. Thus we have a few elites owning most of the wealth on this planet.

Note the Rothschilds, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs get ignored in the super wealthy stakes because they make people like Bill Gates look like paupers.

Arjay, I look forward to the day when the Rothchilds and their obese parasitical ilk are marched up the steps of a guillotine or some modern equivalent and lose their heads and their ill-gotten fortunes in one quick, clean cut.

It must happen in the not too distant future. We can't have these greedy constipated germs flaunting their obscene wealth in our faces forever especially when they make their money via cunning schemes, dubious ventures, fraudulent tax rorts, and bought Governments.

Ah, yes, their day of reckoning is approaching. Greed will be punished down to the last banker and speculator. The proles will see to that!

Greed will become a dirty word!

If there is one thing I have learned over the course of my life, it's the need to UNlearn all that crap about money not bringing happiness.

I have proved beyond any doubt - though not under scientifically controlled laboratory conditions - that money does indeed bring happiness. It brings a whole heap of happy conditions into one's life that poverty simply does NOT - freedom, independence, comfort, security, health, stimulation, adventure, nice surroundings, respect, friends (yes, maintaining friendships costs money - nothing isolates you more than poverty) and, most of all, the joy of never receiving final notices oozing with red print.

Yet we are sternly lectured from cradle to grave - mostly by those whose financial circumstances are insufferably secure - that the best things in life are free, even though every life experience other than breathing has a price on it (and, in some cases, even breathing too). And articles like this one continue to act surprised that all the research actually reverses this conventional non-wisdom by actually showing statistical correlations between wealth and money, and between poverty and misery.

I guess the whole point of 'money doesn't bring happiness' propaganda is to shame us into thinking that wealth is not important to anyone other than the rich, whose very wealth depends on the poverty of many.

Greed will become a dirty word!
David G,
Exactly my sentiment also, there are signs of this happening already.