“Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study it”

“Money can’t buy happiness” is a proverb that has been cited in English since at least 1821. There have been many jocular additions to the proverb.
   
“Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem” was published in the “Starbeam” column written by Bill Vaughan (1915-1977) in the Kansas City (MO) Star on January 12, 1972. The one-line saying about money has been frequently reprinted.
 
     
Wikipedia: William E. Vaughan
William E. ‘Bill’ Vaughan (October 8, 1915 – February 25, 1977) was an American columnist and author. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, he wrote a syndicated column for the Kansas City Star from 1946 until his death in 1977. He was published in Reader’s Digest and Better Homes and Gardens under the pseudonym Burton Hillis. He attended Washington University in St. Louis.
 
His folksy aphorisms (published in his “Starbeams” feature) are often collected in books and on Internet sites. Bill Vaughan died at age 61 of lung cancer.
 
12 January 1972, Kansas City (MO) Star,  “Starbeams” by Bill Vaughan, pg. 16C, col. 6:
Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
 
13 February 1983, Newsday (Long Island, NY), Tax Book sec., pg. 2, col. 1:
Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
—Bill Vaughan, Writer
     
Google Books
Gene Perret’s Funny Business:
Speaker’s Treasury of Business Humor for All Occasions
By Gene Perret and Linda Perret
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
1990
Pg. 113:
“Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.” — Bill Vaughan
 
Google Books
Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
Edited by Ned Sherrin
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
2009
Pg. 220:
Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
Bill Vaughan
Laurence J. Peter (ed.) Quotations for Our Time (1977)
   
Google Books
The New Psychology of Money
By Adrian Furnham
New York, NY: Routledge
2014
Pg. 55:
Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
Bill Vaughan
 
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“Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.”
- Bill Vaughan
3:58 PM · Aug 14, 2019·SocialOomph