“Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” - Spike Milligan
I wonder if the "money can't buy you happiness" people ever lived in a car.
Submitted 4 weeks ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/3ff63117-e4ee-4354-b9c7-684c799f32e7.jpeg
Comments
Supervisor194@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Delphia@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
You’re argument is very convincing. Guess I have to buy a jetski with the money I hav… Oh wait
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I more think it’s impressive they manage to still be unhappy with absolutely no reason to be so.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That is because money can’t buy happiness.
A lack of money can cause unhappiness though.
Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Money can’t buy happiness but poverty can’t buy shit.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Money buys me happiness all the time.
Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Apparently there was a study done and your happiness levels out. Like if you got a big pay bump you’d be happier for a while but then back to baseline.
My boss used this to say that we don’t need raises. I asked if we could prove it and me and her swap pays. She laughed and brushed me off.
tweeks@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
There have been studies that claim there is a max on what money can buy you in terms of happiness. Before it was said to be 70k (of course depends on the country), now it might be 500k.
Gonzako@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah, cost of living has been shot in favour of profit optimizing algorithms
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 weeks 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.
LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Spawn more Luigis
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
This is off topic of the main thread but the chart was eye-opening to me about the order of love/belonging and esteem. Much of my insecurity drives from not having a girlfriend or any intimacy, but the only way to get that is be socially adept, but I’m not because being socially adept is a lower priority on the hierarchy of needs than intimacy.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Many, many people feel pressured to get a partner because it basically is a status symbol that conveys that you are successful, likeable, desirable.
…That isn’t how healthy relationships work.
People are not commodities you can buy, they are not a reward at the end of a video game questline.
You have to be at a point where you you feel secure enough in your own life and your own personality that you can actually have a successful relationship where both people respect each other’s boundaries and don’t become resentful.
Ironically, most people who are seeking a mate… because that is a status symbol, because they feel pressured to, because they think that will fill some hole in their life…?
That is actually a major sign of immaturity and insecurity.
Those kinds of people are more likely to end up in unstable, totally transactional, or even abusive relationships.
…
Don’t feel insecure or let people bully you because you don’t have a mate.
Become ok with yourself first. Stop hanging around people who mock or belittle you, they are bullies, and bullies bully people because they view putting other people down as a way to make themselves feel better about themselves, to gain social clout amongst other likeminded bullies.
I know its especially hard to find in person group activities these days, but there may be some … sports, in person tabletop groups, volunteer at a food bank or shelter, book clubs… these things do still exist, and if your goal is just general social experience, maybe make a few friends, they can help you out with that.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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.
Frenchys_prospecting@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
No one earns a billion dollars. They steal it from those that create wealth.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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)
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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”…
Polderviking@feddit.nl 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
The one I heard is money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you a helicopter, which is almost as good
Gloomy@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Money buys you the luxury of beeing in the position where money can’t contribute to your happiness any longer.
OnASnowyEvening@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Money can’t buy you happiness. But it can damn well enable it.
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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.
Donkter@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Eh, some could also be solved with more time off.
kevin@kitty.ly 4 weeks ago
Why not both? :D
Coreidan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ya the only people who say this bullshit are those that have never experienced hard ship before.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks 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.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
Staycation all I can afford, staycation can’t get away, staycation guess I’ll just be alone.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’ve always said if money can’t buy happiness then what’s the point in having it.
notabot@lemm.ee 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
Not starving to death, mostly
Kaboom@reddthat.com 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
but what is it worth if there’s no one to share it with?
You can pay people for that.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks 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.
bravesirrbn@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Getting 99 salary increases does feel unrealistic though
96VXb9ktTjFnRi@feddit.nl 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
If I may ask, what are the mainreasons people are homeless in the Netherlands? Mental illness? Drugs? Unwillingness to deal with “the system”?
96VXb9ktTjFnRi@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Yes you name important reasons, also migration both legal and illegal. Legal migration also from within Europe, for example there are quite a lot of Polish homeless people here. Often they came here to work, but they lost their job and the housing that was part of the job, and they stick around for a while, thinking to turn things round, but things get worse when they start drinking. Often their best chance is to go back to Poland, because there they social security rights, which they don’t have here. But they feel shame to go back and face their defeat. It’s heartbreaking sometmes, not very proud of how my country treats foreign workers…
There are many schizophrenic homeless people, but people with bad tempers that get themselves into fights all the time. I Often
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Money does buy you happiness. It just has diminishing returns.
So the best way to maximize happiness is to take the money from those that have maximized its effect and give it all to the poor.
borokov@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 4 weeks 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.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks 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.
KryptoSynth@ani.social 4 weeks ago
This image post could have been a text post.
blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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.
kaerypheur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Money of course can buy happiness. Can subcribe to YT Music forever, can pay for therapy, can pay for everything. :,-)
clonedhuman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Digital piracy can get you at least one of those happy things.
capuccino@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
access to culture should be free, access to mental health should be free
Jimius@lemmy.ml 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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.
Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Well duh. Just apply for a leadership position. Double the stress for a dollar raise!
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
EaterOfLentils@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
[deleted]Tezzerets_Tea_Time@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can give you the foundation and support to look for it.
hungrythirstyhorny@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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
Frenchys_prospecting@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Monet can buy “stress free lifestyle” which happiness is a byproduct
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
Amazing how few people question this statement though.
Venator@lemmy.nz 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
In my experience, it’s used to spitshine poverty.