7. High-Status Stress

Jamie Chung for TIME

What if the good life isn't really ... all that good?

What if the very things so many of us strive for--a high-paying, powerful job; a beautiful house; a wardrobe of nice clothes in desirably small sizes; and a fancy education for our children to prep them for carrying on this way of life--turn out to be more trouble than they're worth?

It's long been believed that the psychological burdens associated with being a "low-status individual"--i.e., poor--grow lighter as people move up the social ladder. It turns out that's true only to a point. Once you get high enough, the mental...

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