Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent.
That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either.
My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.
> Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent.
I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded.
Being young and healthy goes a long way. I was happier when I was a poor ahh college student but that doesn't mean losing all my money and possessions would be good for my mental health.
Having kept a diary/journal since 1993 and reading old entries daily, I'm struck by how we often see the past through rose-tinted glasses. The opposite is also true: I tend to forget happy moments from long ago.
>supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be
Sure, they are just people like you and me. Doesn't mean their mere existence isn't evidence of a major flaw in our implementation of capitalism. Our society is becoming far too stratified. Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development, it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs.
"Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development"
A 'right' shouldn't depend on someone else's labor.
"it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs"
I do agree that we need to get rid of the middleman. Replacing it with another one (the government) is a mistake and leads to the same inefficiencies.
Common procedures should be charge directly to the patient. These prices will be forced to go down as there will be actual competition. This won't work in cases where the surgery is rare, and insurance will work here. This will cut most of the bloat out of of health care and reduce the costs for everyone.
Lasik eye surgery is a good example of this. It's not covered by insurance. A decade ago, it was $10,000. My parents just got it a year ago and paid less than $1,000 out of pocket.
Societies have made the poor better off by preventing people from becoming too wealthy, though. Specifically, I'm thinking of the very high high-end tax rates that were common 60 years ago.
I don't know about "too rich", but if you're looking at the distribution of income and wealth, you'll find an increasing divide between poor and rich over the last decades in pretty much all western countries at least.
Not in relative terms, which is what people usually measure. And yes, the gap has been increasing in relative terms.
And I wonder what's behind that rhetoric twist in your second sentence. Was that on purpose or do you not even notice?
Because no, somebody creating more wealth than me does not hurt me by itself (I might even benefit!). Somebody accumulating and being able to command more wealth than me can hurt me, among other reasons because it gives them political power, which they can wield to hurt me and others. Inequal wealth accumulation taken to its logical extreme is undemocratic because it violates the principle of one person one vote.
(Some wealth accumulation is okay. There's room for nuance here.)
That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either.
My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.