I wonder if the "money can't buy you happiness" people ever lived in a car.

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.

Amazing how few people question this statement though.
It's usually used in explaining that a rich person can be sad, rather than to say all poor people are always happy.
- In my experience, it's used to spitshine poverty.

"Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery." - Spike Milligan

"Money cant buy you happiness, but it can buy you a jetski. Have YOU ever seen anyone crying on a jetski?" - me.
- You're argument is very convincing. Guess I have to buy a jetski with the money I hav... Oh wait
- OMG, Daniel Tosh is on Lemmy!

I more think it's impressive they manage to still be unhappy with absolutely no reason to be so.

That is because money can't buy happiness.

A lack of money can cause unhappiness though.
- Money can't buy happiness but poverty can't buy shit.
- Money buys me happiness all the time.

Money probably really doesn't make you happy. Most of the things that make me happy have nothing to do with me being able to buy crap I don't need.

But that dumb sentiment hides the fact that a lack of money can definitely make you miserable.

Only the people that never had stress over dentist of vet bills will suggest money is somehow not a massive factor in determining your quality of life in a capitalist society.

Money alone can't buy happiness, but it sure helps with the down payment.

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 billionaires... assets, of course.

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.
- 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.
I like the way you think. Meeting everyone's two base needs at a minimum is a great way to put it.
Spawn more Luigis
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. This is why people with money say you cant buy happiness... because it is presumably at the top of this pyramid when you achieve it all.
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)
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.
- Garys Economics on Youtube talks about this and his proposed solution. He's worth checking out.
- 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.

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.

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.
- Yeah, cost of living has been shot in favour of profit optimizing algorithms

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.

The one I heard is money can't buy you happiness but it can buy you a helicopter, which is almost as good

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.

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"
- Yep. Once your basic needs are met and you're not in poverty, any happiness above that line has to come from within yourself.
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.
- 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.
- 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"...

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.

We're not in that world for the simple reason that a tiny fraction of people want to have things and they want other people to envy them.

Eh, some could also be solved with more time off.

Why not both? :D

Money buys you the luxury of beeing in the position where money can't contribute to your happiness any longer.

Money can't buy you happiness. But it can damn well enable it.

Ya the only people who say this bullshit are those that have never experienced hard ship before.

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.

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.

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, the wife is out of work (due to the aforementioned hospital stay), 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.
- 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
Staycation all I can afford, staycation can't get away, staycation guess I'll just be alone.

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.

ETA: For those of us outside the ownership class, though, money improves our base Maslow hierarchy (better housing, HVAC, better water, better food) and gets us out of precarity (or worse, scarcity) which make us desperate and miserable (which accounts completely for elevated crime in poor neighborhoods). Money buys us out of that hell hole. The only thing better than not being there is to also have the perspective of not being there, which can lead to maybe helping others behind you out... Unless you're Clarence Thomas. (He's a very special case.)

Getting 99 salary increases does feel unrealistic though

Money can't buy you happiness. But 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 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.

If I may ask, what are the mainreasons people are homeless in the Netherlands? Mental illness? Drugs? Unwillingness to deal with "the system"?
- Yes you name important reasons, also there's 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 have 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 some schizophrenic homeless people, but even more people with bad tempers, anti social personality traits, that get themselves into fights all the time. I often need to remind myself and others, that it's those people that often need help the most. Some people only want to help those that are very sympathetic, and greatfull. But those will make it any way, everyone is willing to help them. It's the ones with the bad tempers and the short fuses that need your help most, because most people are unwilling to look beyond it.

I've always said if money can't buy happiness then what's the point in having it.

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.
Not starving to death, mostly

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?

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...
but what is it worth if there’s no one to share it with?

You can pay people for that.

This image post could have been a text post.

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.

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. https://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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

Edit: not that depression means sad, or that lack of it means happy of course.

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.

That was the original meaning, but it's also been co-opted by assholes as an "argument" against providing for people's basic needs.

Well duh. Just apply for a leadership position. Double the stress for a dollar raise!

Money of course can buy happiness. Can subcribe to YT Music forever, can pay for therapy, can pay for everything. :,-)

Digital piracy can get you at least one of those happy things.
access to culture should be free, access to mental health should be free

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

Money can't buy you happiness, but it can give you the foundation and support to look for it.

*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'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

Money can't solve all your problems but it can solve most of them.

The thing is, it's true that money can't buy you happiness. I can guarantee you that I would still be depressed after a salary increase. I actually think the majority of wealthy people are fucking miserable.

However, money can buy you a lot of other helpful shit and its importance should not be downplayed.

But I have always interpreted "Money can't buy happiness" to mean that accumulating wealth beyond what you need to survive and be comfortable won't actually make your life meaningfully better. And that's true. Happiness levels off after a certain level of wealth.

"Money can't buy happiness" is a warning only intended for people who already have enough money to meet their basic needs. It's bad faith to say it to people who are struggling financially. It's kind of like saying, "Food won't bring you happiness." It has a different meaning depending on whether you are saying it to an emotional overeater or someone who is starving and malnourished.

Money isn't sufficient for happiness, but it's usually necessary.

I too, eat lentils.

I do have terrible crushing problems money can't solve.

but I would be a hell of a lot happier with lowish 6 figures a year.

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.

Here's a write up of the collaboration

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.

To have more time and freedom to reflect on the suffering of these systems that I benefit from more than others do.

Yes. Financial independence would give ample time for me to escape abuse but alas, I'm trapped under family's false insights and paranoia.

"Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable."

~~Clare Boothe Luce

There was definitely a point in my career where I was making 50k CAD/year and it was a bigger change than my previous job when I went from 40k to 45k. I'm in a HCOL area.

I was able to rent my own small 1 bedroom apartment (price has more than doubled since then 🤮), go on small little trips locally, finish paying off me debt, buy a few nice things, and actually save money.

Over the years my salary increased a lot as I retrained as a software developer, and sure, the money is nice and I can buy more nice things and save more, but the big change was at 50k when it finally felt comfortable.

If it was 50k then though, given rent increases and other cost of living increases, I'm not sure you'd get that same experience until 70-75k now though.

The money can't buy you happiness people are rich.

Maybe not rich, but at the very least they are not poor.

I just want to talk.

I made it big. Huge. Motherfucking huge. I bought and paid off my house in 2 years, was taking 5 major trips a year, had all the bullshit.

Wasn't ever a materialist and was frugal, not cheap. Tried to take the lessons of my grandfather who grew up in the depression with literally nothing, and where he taught me over many years that everything is priceless and worthless at the same time. He was 1000x the father to me than my booze-bag sperm-donator male called my "dad".

That piece of wire on the ground might save your life. It might just be another piece of shit. One day you go and buy some wire for $11 because you need it, other times you walk past $11 of free wire laying there because you have no immediate need or want for it. I was too spoiled and precious to get it. I want my meat packaged on a Styrofoam tray and there needs to be cartoons on things. No you shouldn't make me a home made metal detector out of a broken FM radio, lacquered wire and a 9V battery because then I won't be cool.

Through my life and path, I discovered no matter how much material stuff, no matter how lovely the accouterments of my life, no matter how many "freedoms" and experiences I had stemming from my financial wherewithal, there was an underlying thing at the core, the kernel of my being, that had been neglected my whole life. For I was never taught to see it and know it. I hated myself and hated my life and refused to look through the telescope to see that.

I didn't really find any of this out until I had a humiliation that provoked the beginning of my thoughts of personal transformation. I later heard Miles' Kind of Blue for the first time, by myself, in a separate bed from my pill-popping wine-guzzling wife, wearing Bluetooth headphones. I had smoked a grain of cannabis, my first return to it in about 20 years. Something touched me and I cried. One photon of light hit me somewhere and I couldn't unsee it.

I later arrested my rage-drinking, or demon-drinking as I sometimes say. When the magical fairy wand didn't dispense the fairy dust on my life and render everything into utopia, I intuited my power-drinking was a mere behavior and really had effectively nothing to do with the underlying issue. Or perhaps it did in the same sense that water in a boat isn't the issue, it's the rotted holes and splits in the hull.

I aimed myself at discovery and self-transformation and opened myself to anything from which I could take something useful and apply it to my own perspective. After getting into 5 years of heavy therapy which I pursued with vigor, something happened. I connected to that thing that I didn't know existed.

My life exploded, I effectively went insane, but not insane enough to lose sight of that photon. I lost everything because I was not able to care for myself. I ballooned to 135kg.

I had $280,000 in my chequing account at one point, 100K of random investments, and I was living in my car and eating at shelter. I was fucked.

Anyhow.

Now my shit is together. I have 1BR apartment and I will never ask or take more. I refuse. I pull things out of dumpsters, clean them, use what I can and give away the rest. I repair electronics and sell them to survive in part. My community is Harkness Station, a bus shelter in the freezing cold snowbank called Winnipeg, where people live - many suffering addiction and abandoned by humanity. These are my friends and I bring them home-cooked food, water, tea, sugar-laden 3am coffee, hygiene, relief of all sorts. My friend Alex who did 4 years hard time for an armed-robbery he set-up, spoke to me about getting sober 2 days ago. He's heard my story but I've never heard those words on his lips before.

Hear what I'm saying please.

I got an inheritance from my sperm-donors estate and gave it away. There were more than 5 ~~zeroes~~ digits on it.

I am moving to Zen. All of the problems in my life are my own creation.

My grandfather gave me something priceless. My new community at Harkness showed me you can live with nothing.

We put all of this together and I can say with confidence I'll live in a car (which I don't have anymore because I gave it away), eat at the "missions" and be happy as a motherfucker. Whatever bro. I'm happy inside, I can care for me, and I need nothing but basic elements of mechanical survival. edit: How silly of me. I forgot the most important thing of all, perhaps so intuitive to me it needed not be said, but I think it should be said. I also need the love of humanity and connection to community for we are all one. And where I have no community I will make one because I also need that.