Money can’t buy happiness: it’s a rarely questioned truism.

有钱买不到幸福：这是毋庸置疑的老生常谈。

No matter how attached we are to the idea that money can’t buy happiness, though, the research shows almost the complete opposite.

无论我们多么相信有钱难买幸福，研究却显示了完全相反的结果。

After community and social relationships, the association between income and wellbeing is one of the most robust in the happiness literature.

在社区和社交关系之后，收入和幸福的关联是快乐最重要的指标之一了。

And a new study demonstrates just how deep-seated that psychological link is, how intricately our financial circumstances weave their way into our psyches.

一项新研究表明其中的心理链接是多么的深入，我们的财务状况与我们的心理状况是如何错综复杂的纠缠在一起的。

Money doesn’t just shield us from obvious daily stresses, this study tells us, but can actually buy us the most basic of our psychological needs – human connection. The higher our income, the less likely we are to experience loneliness.

钱没法让我们躲避明显的日常压力，研究称，但事实上可以为我们买最基本的精神需求——与人连接。收入越高，我们感受孤独越少。

Although money is clearly no guarantee of contentment, and there are anomalies in the data, as a general rule, the better off we are financially, the happier we are.

虽然金钱不是满足的保障，而且数据中存在异常，但作为一个基本的原则，我们财务状况越好，我们就越快乐。

Positive psychology – the study of happiness and how to improve it – is an academic discipline less than 20 years old, and one of the fastest growing and most newly influential in the US.

积极心理学——一个研究快乐和如何提高它的学科——只有不到20年的历史，是美国发展最快，影响最广的新学科之一。

Positive psychology professors have been contracted to advise everyone from corporate America to the British government, and the field has spawned an entire industry of self-help books, coaching, courses and consultancy.

积极心理学的教授被合同要求向从“美国”公司到英国政府等这些客户提供建议，而这个领域充斥着各种自我提升的书籍、教练、课程和咨询服务等。

Often using small or methodologically flawed studies as evidence, positive psychologists restate over and over the claim that money is of minimal importance to wellbeing.

通常使用小型或方法上错误的研究作为证据，积极心理学反反复复强调金钱对健康的重要性微乎其微。

Positive psychology’s insistence that our circumstances matter little to our happiness, and relentless focus on individual effort has an ideological flavor – a kind of neoliberalism of the emotions.

积极心理学强调我们的环境对我们的快乐有极小的影响，而残酷地把精力集中在个人努力上则充满了思想意识形态的味道——一种情感上的新自由主义。

And perhaps this philosophical bent isn’t surprising, given the positive psychology’s history and its key financial backers.

可能这种哲学的扭曲并不让人吃惊，毕竟积极心理学的历史很短，而它的主要财政支持者又是那些人。

The narrative of the irrelevance of money to happiness has, unsurprisingly been enthusiastically received by corporate America, some of the best customers of the positive psychology movement, who have eagerly replaced pay-rises with “workplace happiness training”, unionization with positive thinking

金钱和快乐无关的论调，豪不出乎意料被“美国”公司兴奋地接受了，其中一些积极心理学运动最好的客户，结合积极的想法，热切地将“办公室快乐培训”替代了加薪。

But it’s a dangerous story. Money matters. And most of us have a lot less of it than we used to.

但这是一个危险的故事。金钱很重要。而且我们当中的许多人比以前拥有更少的金钱了。

For most workers, real income has barely shifted for decades, and more than a quarter of working Americans earn what are officially classified as “poverty-level wages”.

对于大多数工人，实际收入在过去几十年都没有提升，而超过四分之一的美国人仅赚取被标签为“贫困水平薪酬”的数额。

Forty-six million people in the US live below the poverty line and even the middle class is in financial crisis.

4600万美国人生活在贫困线一下，甚至中产阶级都受到财政危机的打击。

Nearly half of Americans would struggle to find $400 in an emergency. Money isn’t a fringe issue to our wellbeing. It’s at the very heart and soul of it.

几乎一半的美国人在危急状况拿不出400美元。金钱不是幸福的边缘问题，而是核心问题。

And instead of being embarrassed to admit that, we should be shouting it from the rooftops, printing it on our fridge magnets and using it as a rallying cry for social action. Money makes us happy!

尴尬于承认这个事实，我们不如在屋顶上把它高喊出来，把它印在冰箱磁铁上，并把它作为社会行动的战斗口号。金钱让我们快乐！

Source: visitbeijing.com.cn