While it may make you secure, money does not make you happy.
. As proof I offer this simple observation. If money made one happy, there would be few (if any) multi-billionaires, because one would find bliss before even reaching that first billion. Think about it, a billionaire or someone approaching one billion dollars in wealth would already have enough money to afford anything their heart desires. For them and generations to come, money will have served its only true purpose and should therefore make them as happy as money could make them. Why then would anyone need or even want to accumulate more money than they or their children or their grandchildren could ever spend?
At some point the point is not to make one's life better, but to have more money than the next billionaire. To some, this may sound like an honorable pursuit, but to me it sounds like an unending nightmare. One which could only foster a mindset of paranoia where there is always someone trying to take your money away.
Sadly, in a Society that prizes money over the teachings of the predominant religions, this fear has a greater probability of being true. Like the saying goes:
"If you're not growing, you're dying."
Perhaps, it's not money that's the problem. Maybe it's the worship of money, which by extension is a manmade construct. Either way, the problems that money and the worship of it cause could easily be resolved in more than one way.
Maybe every citizen should live a year or two in poverty to help foster empathy. Too extreme of a solution? Maybe no one should be allowed to accumulate wealth over a certain threshold: For instance, no individual shall have wealth that exceeds one hundred million dollars (or a value to be determined later) until every man, woman and child have food, water, shelter and all of the necessities of life. How about this? No corporation should have enough wealth to collapse the economy or dictate tax policy. There are so many examples of what not to do from our past. We have our pick of things that harm our nation. Why not simply do the opposite (within reason). Why not write laws that actually help avoid these historic problems so we can avoid them in the future? Why not reinstate laws that had a proven track record like Glass-Steagall? This may sound simplistic but does it sound like any lesser of an answer than whatever is being done currently. Could we screw things up any worse than our leaders have screwed them up now?
I understand that limiting the amount of excess wealth could result in those impacted by such measures not working as hard, but who cares. Those people who are supposed "drivers of the economy" are the same people whose money causes the impoverishment of so many other people.
Money, as implied above, is a manmade construct. Don't believe me? Ask any other species on Earth for change for a dollar and hold your breath. If you haven't passed out, take a deep breathe and consider what money as a manmade construct means: The idea of money may have been created by some well-intentioned person or persons but it's necessity is perpetuated by those who benefit the most from hoarding it
While I will concede that money can bring one a false sense of happiness in today's society, the consequences attached to its accumulation could never equate to true happiness and on balance there are too many sacrificed for the happiness of too few. The majority of us go without so a tiny group of sociopaths can further control our lives
Ultimately, money does not bring happiness in a direct sense for those hoarding it nor in an indirect manner when considering the extent to which it causes unhappiness through economic atrocities like wealth inequality.
The Regaining American Democracy (RAD) word or phrase of the day:
Wellthy - noun
A rich person who considers the ramifications of their excessive wealth and takes action(s) to remediate it's most negative impacts.
See - Feeneyism - as in Charles (Chuck) Feeney AKA The only good billionaire - a man worth eight (8) billion dollars who gave it all away to charities before his death.
