Won 50 quid on blackjack this afternoon which isn't life changing but that's dinner and drinks sorted tonight with some left over so that's a happy thought
I think "money can buy you happiness" as a statement is far too simplistic, but if we update it then a version of it could be true.
First of all, I think most people using this forum would agree that if you're so poor you can't afford to live with basic necessities/easy access to your "human rights", then you are going to have a hard time being happy (please @ me if you disagree - I wanna know what you think). You're probably gonna be too busy working out whether you can eat a meal in a day or whether your landlord will kick you out to worry about life satisfaction levels, yeah?
But I would argue that that doesn't necessarily equate to money bringing happiness. There's the obvious question of how much money brings you happiness, yes. Y'know, where middle class people are happy living comfortably but if you get "too rich" (whatever that means) then your life satisfaction starts to fall again. I attempted to find a graph from a reputable website but I didn't look very hard and reallyyyy didn't wanna post one from the Huffington Post so please just believe me on this ok. It's not really the point I wanna talk about anyway.
SO. What I do wanna talk about is: money doesn't buy you happiness. Wealth equality leads to happiness whereas wealth inequality leads to unhappiness. And more specifically, wealth inequality (perceiving yourself as poor when comparing yourself to the people around you) leads to super unhappiness. Throwback to what I said about people who are worrying about whether or not they can eat or become homeless to bother with trying to be happy. Those people, weirdly, are probably still somehow wealthier, have more access to government benefits (like the NHS, jobseekers, emergency housing etc.*) than large portions of the developing world.
(*Side note: not saying these people are in any way lucky, emergency housing is shit and awful and in such crazy high demand. And despite having access to that stuff some people choose not to take it for all sorts of valid reasons. Just pointing out that lots of people in the world couldn't even imagine their government helping them to... stay alive and not be totally miserable?)
BUT those people in the Western world are surrounded by people who are much wealthier than them. They can walk two miles across their city or whatever and suddenly be in the nice, comfortable suburbs with 4 bedrooms and rooms that are called the Library, or they can just open Instagram tbh. Then compare that to countries where everyone around you is in the same/a similar situation to you, comparing yourself to others you don't feel much better or much worse off than them. And THAT'S where I think money makes a difference to happiness. If you can see people close by who have things you don't have and they also have more money than you, you want more money and you're unhappy because you don't have access to more money, ergo you decide you don't have access to things that could make you happy. Similarly, my point about perceived wealth: you live in a nice house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a library (I really like this library now and I'm gonna stick with it). Your neighbour, whose house is almost identical, gets a big ass promotion and suddenly extends her house to have a **** fancy conservatory and a new cinema room!!! You're no less poor, you're still extremely well off, you have everything you need to live, but suddenly you perceive yourself as being poorer and you're sad now. Sucks to be you.
What a long winded way of saying if you can see lots of people who are richer than you and seem to be having a better time than you (mostly cause social media lets them display their best bits whilst shoving the bad bits to the back), you're going to decide you're poor thanks to wealth inequality and get real sad real fast.
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