Tim Weber of BBC News wrote an article covering a forum discussion about what makes people happy. I believe all members of the forum are wrong.

Happiness is inward-facing; the source of the enjoyment of outward experiences rather than the result. Happiness is exclusively the result of accepting, consciously or subconsciously, full responsibility for one’s own life.

The conscious or subconscious process is: “I can be happy, because I am the master of my life. Hence, I can choose the experiences within my grasp that I believe make me happy.”

Thus, both a soccer game in a dusty field in the African countryside, and the acquisition of billions through business acumen, can be experienced as contributing to happiness, while in reality the happiness experienced stems not from the goal scored or the profit earned, but from the conscious or subconscious knowledge that the pleasant experience is both the achievement and the responsibility of the subject.

The ultimate conclusion to be drawn from this is that the correlation between money and happiness used as the basis for the article has been interpreted backwards (as correlations usually are): people more capable of being happy are also more capable of accumulating wealth.