*pay increase above actual inflation/bill increases.
My pay has gone up every year, but each year I end up poorer as my bills eat the extra, plus some more!
I wonder if the "money can't buy you happiness" people ever lived in a car.
Submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/3ff63117-e4ee-4354-b9c7-684c799f32e7.jpeg
Comments
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee 2 hours ago
The problems of poverty might be easier to deal with. Not discounting that. But a salary increase under capitalism does not solve the fundamental depression you feel from alienation.
Not to say I don’t have it better. I do. But the emptiness is not solved by a higher wage. It only has allowed me to have the time to become more reflective and depressed by the alienation of my labor.
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m all but certain the whole “money can’t buy happiness” shtick is just classist propaganda to keep the peasants poor by trying to build some kind of weird pride in staying poor.
Money can buy freedom, and while freedom doesn’t guarantee happiness, it’s a pretty fucking important ingredient.
ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Amazing how few people question this statement though.
Venator@lemmy.nz 11 hours ago
It’s usually used in explaining a rich person is sad, rather than to say all poor people are always happy.
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
In my experience, it’s used to spitshine poverty.
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Meh. I grew up dirt poor, and I am now what past me would have considered successful.
Funny thing about it, though, I’m still me. I’m that same dirt poor teenager, just older. It didn’t change me like I thought it would.
Absolutely, the lack of money will make you unhappy. Without a doubt. But I’ve never got a 20% raise and felt 20% happier. You’re always gonna be who you are, money or not.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I’ve also heard that this advice really only scales until you hit the cost of living price for your area, which supports your idea.
Its not necessarily “money won’t make you happier”, it’s more “poverty makes you sadder”
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Yep. Once your basic needs are met and you’re not in poverty, any happiness above that line has to come from within yourself.
Devanismyname@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
This so much. I didn’t grow up dirt poor, but also pretty low class. Now I live in the nice part of town and have a somewhat above average pay. Still miserable. Still the depressed loser I always have been. Just more money and a big house. Though, if I was just barely able to make ends meet, I’d be way more miserable.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 17 hours ago
Neither my wife or I have been able to afford to go to the dentist in over 20 years. I’ve had a general medical checkup once in that time. We make too much to get free care but not enough to afford care. It absolutely kills me because I work for a nonprofit that provides food and other resources to people in need. They’re always talking about their doctors appointments, procedures etc and I’m like, yeah I don’t get that kind of thing.
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
The part that really sucks is you don’t get to really understand this until you’re in your 30s/40s. We spend all this time trying to fill a hole in ourselves that can’t be filled with stuff.
There are people reading this right now who are like “yeah, right”…
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
How does one obtain food, shelter, healthcare, a basic sense of security by having a stable and safe living space?
Oh thats right, you obtain all that with money, obtaining those things without money is either functionally impossible for the vast majority of people, or literally a crime.
Yeah, adding an infinite amount of money to one person doesn’t meaningfully impact their ability to get those first two layers figured out.
Distributing money such that everyone has those two base layers… is quite literally the foundation for a happy, stable, productive society.
Liquidate the bullionaires… assets, of course.
Fuhgeddaboutit@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
I like the way you think.
LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
Spawn more Luigis
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Good old Maslow. This is correct. The first two require money. As a single person without children, I’ve generally got the first two covered. I can not cover the third and I also feel like any amount of money will not help me either.
comfy@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Liquidate the billionaires… assets, of course.
If it were that simple, then we should just liquidate the billionaires with rifles. They deserve no respect.
Unfortunately, they’re just the symptom of systematic issues of capitalist political economy, so without solving that, new billionaires will emerge.
Fuhgeddaboutit@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
Garys Economics on Youtube talks about this and his proposed solution. He’s worth checking out.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
That’s what government is supposed to be for. To regulate. Capitalism is like a car, or a train. When under control, harnessed, maintained, directed, it is an amazing engine for accomplishing things. When out of control, it’s deadly.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 16 hours ago
But by giving the poor money we’d be robbing them of their ability to reach self actualization by creatively solving their own problems! (/s obviously)
kaerypheur@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Money of course can buy happiness. Can subcribe to YT Music forever, can pay for therapy, can pay for everything. :,-)
clonedhuman@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Digital piracy can get you at least one of those happy things.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
Money absolutely does buy happiness until you’re in middle class and in a fulfilling job. (If you’re rich but in a shit job, it means you might have the option to work less or look for a better position.)
Money does not buy you happiness applies to people who are already rich and are looking for money to fulfill needs way high on the Maslow hierarchy. In fact, much of the tyranny and cruelty within stratified social systems comes from miserable rich people believing they should be happy due to their vast wealth and power yet are not. And our capitalist society has messages everywhere that promise that a new car, (yacht, vacation, lover, religion, etc.) will totally fulfill them and they don’t.
I mean we’ve had three billionaires shoot themselves into space. If that’s not an obvious plead to the gods or the cosmos for a taste of nirvana I don’t know what is.
Curiously, this is a thing that Jesus (and every other divine-ish wise guy) knew about: If we give away our vast fortune and live simply with that experience and wisdom, fulfillment comes. But it means overcoming greed for wealth and power, which is quicker, easier, more seductive.
Polderviking@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Money doesn’t make you happy. It’s probably true. But that statement hides the fact that a lack of money can definitely make you miserable.
Rooty@lemmy.world 1 day ago
As the saying goes, money can’t buy you happiness but a lack of money can buy you a lot of misery. Enough money for a comfortable lifestyle, anything over that and we enter ego validation territory.
echodot@feddit.uk 22 hours ago
The one I heard is money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you a helicopter, which is almost as good
Supervisor194@lemmy.world 1 day ago
“Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” - Spike Milligan
Delphia@lemmy.world 1 day ago
“Money cant buy you happiness, but it can buy you a jetski. Have YOU ever seen anyone crying on a jetski?” - me.
the_swagmaster@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
You’re argument is very convincing. Guess I have to buy a jetski with the money I hav… Oh wait
ameancow@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
A few years ago I was stealing water from a construction site so my partner and I could flush the toilet. Parked in a development lot in the middle of the night, watching for security guards while I filled a bunch of plastic organizer bins in the back of a van.
We were several years into a total financial crashout from a combination of major health problems, deaths in the family, and a floundering job market. Things are better now, but I can say at least that I know now what it feels like to lose everything and claw your way back out of the hole. I don’t recommend it, it sucks.
Our nation doesn’t want you to succeed. Remember that. In order for the wealthy to stay wealthy, there has to be a class of people who have less or nothing so that money retains value. We’re the richest fucking nation that’s ever existed, many times over, so if we really wanted we could end poverty, we could end hunger and disease and make a glorious world where everyone is comfortable and able to aim for their own dreams without risk of losing everything and having to steal water to flush the fucking the toilet.
borokov@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I’m really pissed of this “I’m sad 'cause I’m poor. So if I had money I would be happy.”
(Poverty imply sadness) does not imply (wealth imply hapiness). That’s basic formal logic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition The Contraposition is (not sadness imply not poverty). So, If you are happy, you have money.
Expressed differently, if all the poor are sad, we can state that a happy person is not poor. But we cannot state anything about a rich person being happy or not.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
In this case, “I’m sad 'cause I’m poor” doesn’t mean “if poor, then sad”, it means “poor if, and only if, sad”. Logic is about more than symbols.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Good thing these statements are not absolute then. Anecdotally I am way more happy thanks to my well praying job, even though the only change in my life apart from that was getting a driver’s license.
96VXb9ktTjFnRi@feddit.nl 19 hours ago
Money can’t buy you happiness. Stress due to lack of money destroys people. Working as a volunteer at a homeless shelter has taught me that atleast here in the Netherlands quite some of them stay homeless not because there are no options to get of the street, but because with these options comes all the stress of owning a home and having to pay the bills. That goes to show, how rough it must be to live with financial stress, because living on the street itself is terribly rough, and still some prefer it.
LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
If I may ask, what are the mainreasons people are homeless in the Netherlands? Mental illness? Drugs? Unwillingness to deal with “the system”?
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I more think it’s impressive they manage to still be unhappy with absolutely no reason to be so.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That is because money can’t buy happiness.
A lack of money can cause unhappiness though.
Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Money can’t buy happiness but poverty can’t buy shit.
KryptoSynth@ani.social 19 hours ago
This image post could have been a text post.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Honestlyyyy.
My biggest issue rn is credit card debt. My dog needed multiple surgeries and my car needed fixed. I have 2 maxed out cards and no interest until November. It’s only like 6k to pay off, but it’s still overwhelming because I’ve never had to deal with this type of thing before. I think I can get it all paid off before November, but it’s still a daunting task.
Rip my fun summer plans.
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Yeah, life always seems to throw expensive problems at people all at the same time. I thought I had a pretty good nest egg saved up, and then boom… Car shit the bed, cat needed surgery, wife had a hospital stay, and a few other big life events. All while the economy is in the garbage, inflation is in the high double digits, (due to the aforementioned hospital stay) the wife is out of work, and any hope of a social safety net was being dismantled right in front of me.
I didn’t even consciously realize how stressed I was about money, until I realized I had fallen back to pirating my PC games instead of just buying them. I hadn’t been a prolific pirate since my broke college student days… And then suddenly there I was again, browsing FG’s site for the latest repack, so I could install it in between shifts.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I found myself going to my mom’s place every day for dinner for a week and taking leftovers home. Now she’s just automatically freezing portions for me. She knows my ass is BROKE
raynethackery@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Staycation all I can afford, staycation can’t get away, staycation guess I’ll just be alone.
Jimius@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
Sure, but poverty is a lack of money. The inability to sustain oneself healthily. Once you have “sufficient” money, having even more won’t make you happier.
oatscoop@midwest.social 15 hours ago
That was the original meaning, but it’s also been co-opted by assholes as an “argument” against providing for people’s basic needs.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ya the only people who say this bullshit are those that have never experienced hard ship before.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
If people have not experienced hard ship and they are still unhappy, they are qualified to tell you that the lack of economic problems does not bring happiness.
Just by pure logic.
bravesirrbn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Getting 99 salary increases does feel unrealistic though
Donkter@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Eh, some could also be solved with more time off.
kevin@kitty.ly 1 day ago
Why not both? :D
blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 1 day ago
Happiness is connected to contentment, feeling you have enough.
There are people living in their cars who are happy, and elon musk, with all the money in the world, very much doesn't look like a happy person.Maalus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
He is confirmed to be sufferring from treatment resistant depression, hence the ketamine. Or more accurately, esketamine nose injections. Expensive as shit, but a “wonderdrug” in treating it. At least when done by reputable doctors and not recreationally.
Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 21 hours ago
Well duh. Just apply for a leadership position. Double the stress for a dollar raise!
mechoman444@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Money can’t solve all your problems but it can solve most of them.
Tezzerets_Tea_Time@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can give you the foundation and support to look for it.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve always said if money can’t buy happiness then what’s the point in having it.
notabot@lemm.ee 1 day ago
It buys a reduction in unhappiness, which is a good first step to hapiness, but money can’t take you the next step of actually appreciating what you’ve got.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
Not starving to death, mostly
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Past a certain point, money can’t buy any more happiness. Sure, you have a house, but what is it worth if there’s no one to share it with?
Empricorn@feddit.nl 1 day ago
There’s always gold-digging hoes. (That includes men too.) When people only want your money, you literally have to go out of your way to make your own happiness…
remon@ani.social 1 day ago
but what is it worth if there’s no one to share it with?
You can pay people for that.
exasperation@lemm.ee 17 hours ago
Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton at Princeton University published a study in 2010 showing that money buys happiness only up to about $75k per year (in 2010 dollars, for Americans), at which point happiness plateaus and more money doesn’t meaningfully buy more happiness.
Years later, Matthew Killingsworth at the University of Pennsylvania published a study showing that happiness didn’t really plateau with money, but kept increasing at $75k and beyond.
They got together to see if they could reconcile their different findings from pretty similar methodologies.
As it turns out, Killingsworth’s data did show the same plateau, at pretty much the same place, if you focus only on the least happy 20%. In a sense, the Kahneman data was focused on only measuring unhappiness, and didn’t properly distinguish between people who were kinda happy, people who were moderately happy, and people who were really happy.
So now the most widely accepted analysis is that there are people who are deeply unhappy, for whom giving them more money might not make them emotionally better off, at least past $75k in 2010 dollars. But for the rest of us, the majority of people will continue getting happier with more money, well up to the $500k income.
tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I’m very close to paying off all my student debt. You’d think I’d be happier with the extra 250 a month now going to me, but… it’s really not a life changing amount. I can afford better groceries, and can save a bit for a rainy day. Other than that, nothing much really.
Financial independence would be life changing. Not seeing a large portion of my income going to rent, but to a property that I own and can happily invest time and effort into. That would be amazing
hungrythirstyhorny@lemmy.world 1 day ago
but it surely helps a lot, i mean i dont ask to be a billionaire, just enough for place to living, and i dont have to worry about food. and maybe with a pc gaming :) and i hope i dont need to go to hospital because sickness. just die while im asleep… just burn my body or give it to some lion. i dont care
pardon my english
Gloomy@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
Money buys you the luxury of beeing in the position where money can’t contribute to your happiness any longer.