In paragraph six, the sentence “steady improvements in the economy are not accompanied by a steady increase in people’s assessments of their own happiness” gives me several ideas. In my view, may be [maybe] the authorwant [wants] to show us [that]the concept that “the richer you are, the happier you will feel” is not correct. People are not satisfied with the given level of income or they want more about that. When our material needs are met, we’d like to pursue the mental enjoyment.
In reading the passages, I found that there were many sentences are very difficult to understand, the sentence-type of which is very complex. For example, the sentence “one could reason that pessimists, whose low expectations are so often exceeded, would constantly be surprised by joy” in paragraph nine is hard to understand. I think may be it means “one of the reasons that pessimists would constantly be surprised by joy is that the pessimists’ low expectation is so often exceeded”.
