Humans are essentially unsatisfied creatures - if you take a starving dog out of the rain and feed him, he will love you forever.   After a few weeks of nice treatment, many humans will decide they deserved to be taken out of the rain and maybe even that they are doing you a favor.

So it goes with wealth.   Money does buy happiness, contrary to folk wisdom - it just doesn't last.  In the case of entire nations that get a better standard of living, after about a decade happiness is no longer rising with wealth.   Let's not kid ourselves, people in wealthier nations are happier, on average, than people in poor ones, but it does not rise forever.

Lisa Rudy posted "Misinterpretation of Autism News Can Cause Serious Confusion" over at About.com's autism site, and the comments have gotten interesting and clearly demonstrate the growing gap between what consumers know and believe and what researchers have determined. This is something I've written about