Some say money can’t buy happiness, and perhaps in a spiritual sense this axiom is true. Nevertheless, studies have been conducted that show a modicum of correlation between happiness and income. This trend caps off once we surpass a threshold of income, approximately $75k USD, wherein the marginal increase in fulfillment in our lives afterward becomes relatively minimal as our salaries increase. Furthermore, the study points out the percentage of individuals that feel happiness on a daily basis.

The authors found that most Americans — 85% — regardless of their annual income, felt happy each day. Almost 40% of respondents also reported feeling stressed (which is not mutually exclusive with happiness) and 24% had feelings of sadness. Most people were also satisfied with the way their life was going.

Given the 85 percent number is well beyond the range of a parliamentary and/or congressional supermajority, it’s not so difficult to conclude that such feelings of happiness each day may very well be responsible for the lack of action on key issues concerning social justice. The 15 percent that do not have the luxury of feeling happy, which are likely included in the 24 percent that had feelings of sadness, are the oft forgotten disadvantaged minorities and people of colour.

After all, consider yourself feeling happy: a state of mind that is inherent in its vanity and lack of critical introspection as it is a function of one’s own neurochemicals for the purpose of self-aggrandization. You smile, you laugh, you feel good, and this is celebrated and promoted by corporate media and a majority of society. The propagandist agenda to maintain a sense of contentment with the status quo, through marketing and promotions, as a result only serve to benefit those that reap the rewards of maintaining white supremacist institutions, patriarchal hegemony, and capitalism.

In a world where capitalism has figured out a way to commodify happiness and subsequently dole it out on demand, this feeling can no longer be seen as innocuous as it is initially billed.