Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly, take pleasure in their lives going badly, or believe that their lives are going badly. As a result, some popular theories of welfare are paradoxical. I show that no attempt to defend those theories from the paradox fully succeeds.Keywords Value AE Welfare AE Desire AE Hedonism AE Paradox Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly. Such desires have sometimes been thought to be counterexamples to desire satisfactionist theories of welfare-contrary to desire satisfactionism, getting what you want is not always good for you. 1 Recently it has been pointed out that such desires might not be mere counterexamples; they seem to create a paradox for desire satisfactionism. Given the existence of these desires, and given the truth of desire satisfactionism, sometimes a person's life goes well if and only if it does not go well. 2 The only extended discussion of this paradox appears in Heathwood (2005). The paradox deserves more attention, in light of the following facts: (1) Desire-satisfactionism is currently one of the most popular theories of welfare. (2) The scope of the paradox has not been appreciated; similar paradoxes arise for other theories of welfare, as well as for axiological theories about the values of things such as consequences and possible worlds. (This paper, however, focuses on theories of welfare.) (3) Welfare theory is a vital part of many subfields of ethics and political philosophy, so the paradox has wide-ranging implications. In what follows I explain the paradox for desire-satisfactionism, I show that a similar