The importance of sex and money

All right, the gig is up. Let's all pack up our bags, donate Huntsman Hall to the English Department and transfer to the College.

I'm talking, of course, about the Blanchflower-Oswald study.

Two economists, Dartmouth University's David Blanchflower and the University of Warwick's Andrew Oswald, surveyed 16,000 people on their levels of sexual activity and happiness and compared their responses to their income. Their findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, indicate that -- not surprisingly -- people who have more sex claim to live happier lives, and that money does not bring them as much happiness as sex does.

If this is so, then why not get rich and, as a result, get sex? After all, people with more money have more sex; look at Donald Trump.

Not so: Blanchflower and Oswald found no correlation between the frequency of sex and income level. More money does not mean more sex.

So why, then, are we in Wharton?

Of course, sex is not the only thing that makes us happy, but it surely does take up a large chunk of the happiness pie. Blanchflower and Oswald found that sex mattered so much to people's happiness levels that they estimated that increasing intercourse from once a month to once a week was equivalent, in terms of happiness, to earning $50,000 more per year for the average American. Just think of the present value of that annuity!

Assuming that the $50,000 figure is true, let us examine two scenarios.

First, let's say that I can't wait to graduate from Wharton and go to work 90 hours per week, living in a cockroach-infested apartment on New York's West Side, working for an investment bank. My salary? I'm in a negotiations class, so I negotiated a fine $70,000 starting salary for my first year because, Mr. Sachs, I am worth your time. But I am so busy looking at the exciting charts that I have no time for sex, and I am too scared to talk to the nice lady on the street corner. So no sex for me.

Alternatively, let's say I follow the footsteps of my friend -- I shall here refer to him as Mr. T. Mr. T is a psychology major in the College. He's always had an interest in human sexuality, evolution and psychology, but when he got to college he realized that he could put this knowledge to work in pursuing sexual satisfaction. And he did -- with stunning results. But because conventional foolishness holds that a liberal arts education is a fast-track to poverty, let's assume the best job that Mr. T can get out of Penn is flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, for $20,000 per year. Yet with all that spare time on his hands, Mr. T has time for sex at least once a week (and more than that if he keeps to his current routine).

These two alternatives present me with a strange menu of choices: Assuming that I will be equally happy either way, would I rather have $50,000 extra per year, or sex once a week, every week, all year round? I feel like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, when Homer's automatic dialing machine calls him and promises him the secret to eternal happiness for one dollar -- "I'd be happier with the dollar," Mr. Burns declares. Yes, despite his Yale education, Mr. Burns seems to think like a genuine Whartonite.

But I don't.

What Blanchflower and Oswald show us, and what we all know deep inside, is that money is not the great panacea that it is made out to be. I'd gladly take a lower salary if it indeed would make me just as happy as a higher salary with less leisure time, simply because money is just not as important as other things in life, such as sex. There are, of course, other things that make us happy. The key is to find those things and make them ours, and that is what I think a liberal arts education -- and college in general -- are for.

In Book I of The Republic, Plato gets Thrasymachus to admit that each craft brings its own particular benefit, but the common benefit of every craft (money) itself comes from its own craft, that of money-making. At Wharton, we study the craft of money-making. But if, indeed, every craft is accompanied by this very craft -- that is, if we'll make money no matter what occupation we take up -- it would be wise to find the real reason why we are in Wharton. Is it just money, or is it sex? Or curing AIDS by financing unprofitable vaccines to third-world countries?

Whatever it is, I hope that it is happiness to you.

Cezary Podkul is a junior Management and Philosophy major in Wharton and the College from Chicago, Ill. Cezary Salad appears on Mondays.

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