It’s a cliché to say that money can’t buy you love (though, as Randy Newman correctly noted, “it’ll get you a half-pound of cocaine and a sixteen-year old girl.”) But there’s still some notion in modern life that money can buy happiness, whatever that is. I’ve been reading a new book on emotional psychology (“Strangers to Ourselves”), and it might argue the point. Take a look at the life of a certain lottery winner…

When Paul McNabb’s name was picked as the first million-dollar winner in the Maryland State Lottery, in July 1973, he fell to the floor and mumbled, “oh my God,” over and over. McNabb probably thought he was on easy street…
…
Soon after he appeared on television in 1973, McNabb was besieged by people demanding a share of the winnings. One person threatened his daughters; another broke into his house. “If you’ve gone through what I went through that first year, you wouldn’t have trusted your own mother,” he told the reporter. McNabb eventually moved to Nevada to escape the attention, but he did not find lasting happiness there either. “Do you realize I’ve lost 20 years of social life, of being human? I never got over the point that I always had to be on my guard.”

It sounds like McNabb didn’t even get around to buying any 16 year old girls.