Money can’t buy happiness — but lack of it can certainly make
you progressively miserable, says one Nobel Prize-winning
economist. Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of the now-
popular field of behavior economics, delivered a fascinating TED
talk earlier this year entitled “The Riddle of Experience vs.
Memory,” and got into an interesting discussion with TED host
and curator Chris Anderson. (Hat tip to GatesVPblog via My Money
Blog.) Arguing that experience is essentially divided into the
“experiencing self” and the “remembering self,” Kahnemen
suggests that happiness is essentially an act of deftly
balancing the two. (They don’t always match up, it turns out.)
Here’s Kahneman: We know something about what controls
satisfaction of the happiness self. We know that money is very
important, goals are very important. We know that happiness is
mainly being satisfied with people that we like, spending time
with people that we like. There are other pleasures, but this is
dominant. So if you want to maximize the ha