• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
    312·
    23 days 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.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
      72·
      23 days ago

      “Money cant buy you happiness, but it can buy you a jetski. Have YOU ever seen anyone crying on a jetski?” - me.

  • Rooty@lemmy.world
    12·
    23 days 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.

  • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    23 days ago

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

  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
    7·
    23 days 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
      1·
      22 days 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, 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.

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
        1·
        22 days 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

  • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    22 days 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.

    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.

  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    21 days 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.

  • kaerypheur@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

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

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    3·
    22 days 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.

    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.)