Your post was brilliant but you ruined it with this..
>>only to be puzzled when having a large number in their bank account fails to actually solve any of their problems.
I'm not sure what kind of utterly broken philosophy propagates this idea. Do people actually believe that some one starving, unable to afford any kind of medical care, who doesn't have a proper home, clothes or anything for that matter is far more happy than a millionaire?
What kind of a brainwashing does it take to help such absurd thoughts totally devoid of common sense to sink in?
Not one single person who is rich I know isn't happy. When rich people talk of money being unable to solve 'some problems' they are talking of stuff which I wouldn't even consider as problems. They are more like minor small time inconveniences.
Yeah seriously. My grandma died and left me enough money to not have to work for like ten years, even without investing it. I live relatively simply to try and stretch it out, but goddamn if it hasn't removed a ton of stress from my life and made me a lot happier. I've got the freedom to spend my days writing and drawing a comic about a lesbian robot with reality problems instead of scrambling for crappy web dev work or begging my friends who draw stuff for PopCap for an in to go work all week on stuff I don't care much about.
People have a sort of natural baseline level of happiness, different for each person. When bad or good things happen you move the needle a bit, but when you get into a steady state it moves right back to your baseline. Unless you live in a situation of genuine poverty it's highly unlikely that having more money will make you happier. I know all sorts of income classes and i don't know of a difference in self-perceived happiness among those classes. You can mock rich people for the silly worries they have (like how best to invest their money) but that doesn't mean those worries aren't just as real to them.
(Incidentally, the book The Happiness Hypothesis covers this subject as well as how to actually become happier.)
The whole point is we first need to define happiness, no?
There are a lot of people who are confused between things like sadness, disappointment, inconvenience, hopelessness and many such negative emotions.
The problem is we bundle them all en masse in to this category called 'happiness' or its opposite. To be happy is a overloaded term used to define many emotions.
Rich people suffer from the same negative emotions any human on earth goes through. Because they are humans. If their child doesn't win a soccer game, they may get disappointed, if some one in the family falls ill to a deadly disease without a cure they may feel hopeless. But these are emotions every human regardless of their financial status goes through. Whether you are rich or poor.
Having money will keep you well fed, clothed and housed. Your medical expenses are taken care of. Your children's needs are tended to and give you an overall sense of confidence and a sense of safety and freedom.
Being poor means you have a put up with a great deal of BS that life throws at you. You have to sacrifice every single thing, every single desire of yours. Its very exact opposite of what I wrote above.
I don't know of one single human who doesn't go through human emotions but yeah coming to being happy in the sense having to never really get screwed at every step along the way. Rich people never really stop being happy, and most poor people don't even what that kind of happiness actually is. Basically because they continually being fed this garbage that suffering in their current state is far better than breaking out of it.
Wealth removes a number of problems yes, but there are plenty of problems left to deal with.
Even with medical bills "taken care of", health issues don't just disappear. Making love work is just as hard for wealthy people as for anybody else. And some wealthy people feel trapped by their wealth and the responsibility that comes with it. I had a conversation with a guy who had been "told" by his mother that it was time for him to step up as CEO in the family business. We are talking about a large company and this guy flies his own helicopter. I met him in Bangkok where I was staying for the time because I was just traveling around. He told me that he envied me and I got the impression that he was truly miserable because he really didn't want to be CEO of this company. If this man is happy by your definition then it's definitely different from the definition that I subscribe to.
Making love work is just as hard for wealthy people as for anybody else.
It's less clear-cut with love, but at least marriage is much easier for wealthy people - or at least, non-poor people. Divorce rates are higher among poor people, and it makes sense: being low on cash creates a new stress factor, and relationships can be broken by that.
I'm not aware of clear evidence when it comes to love, but I'd wager that it looks at least similar.
That fellow's problem is being under his mother's thumb. It sucks for poor people too. But at least if he decided to quit, he wouldn't have to wonder how he'd eat. So from this we can conclude that making yourself a slave to another person leads to unhappiness, but being rich is very good for your freedom as an employee.
>>only to be puzzled when having a large number in their bank account fails to actually solve any of their problems.
I'm not sure what kind of utterly broken philosophy propagates this idea. Do people actually believe that some one starving, unable to afford any kind of medical care, who doesn't have a proper home, clothes or anything for that matter is far more happy than a millionaire?
What kind of a brainwashing does it take to help such absurd thoughts totally devoid of common sense to sink in?
Not one single person who is rich I know isn't happy. When rich people talk of money being unable to solve 'some problems' they are talking of stuff which I wouldn't even consider as problems. They are more like minor small time inconveniences.