Today at SOR (School of Religion - I'm a pretty non-observant Catholic - which is basically an hour and a half of 'OMG KIDS GOD LOVES SOOO MUCH!'), some kid asked the teacher "Do all dogs go to heaven?" and the entire class got into this huge fight. Our teacher got so mad.
Happiness is unrelated to one's socioeconomic situation, at least not directly. It's not like only the Bill Gates's of the world are happy, happiness has existed for years. It's not a new concept, and it's never been a dream that we've strived for-people can be happy, regardless of how much money they have.
The thing is, if you have less money, you find joy in even the meanest of things, the most commonly accepted by the rich. And it's beyond that-the poorer you are, the less you'll rely on material and capital and the more you'll rely on camaraderie and family-both of which lead directly to happiness.
One could even argue that the poor can only go up, and the rich can only go down-that's what, for the most part, change will bring. A rich man has only poverty to look forward. Sure, he may never lose money, but in that case his life will never change-it'll be in the same rut for the rest of his life.
I don't fully understand it myself, but you could say that happiness is harder to achieve the closer you get to your cultures idea of utopia. My life, as an upper middle class person at the dawn of the 21st century, would be beyond utopia for someone a few hundred years ago. Utopia changes as time goes on. But the closer you get, the farther you get from improvement, from further perfection, and once you've reached it the only way you can move is down. Utopia is really quite well named-"Nowhere." It's impossible to reach Utopia, as Utopia gets farther and farther away the closer you get, and once you finally reach it you lose happiness to boredom and normality.
Utopia is similar to fire, in a way. You can't get too close, or else it'll burn your happiness. But if you get too far, you freeze to death. The closer you get, the more you burn, but the less you freeze. The farther you get, the less it burns, but the more you freeze. Finding Osmosis-somewhere that balances the best of the heat and the less of the freezing-is difficult, maybe impossible. True, it's possible to not get burnt as you get closer-you can be happy and filthy rich-but it's extremely difficult to achieve this.
*jumps in* I'll give you only a penny for those thoughts, good sir.
The way I see it, you can only be happy if you're fighting for something, and the richer you are, the harder it is to find something worth fighting for.