Can Money Buy Happiness?

If we can agree that everyone on Earth wants to be happy, then it would seem quite obvious that money cannot buy happiness. If it could, there would be no sad superstars, no miserable millionaires.

To argue that money can buy happiness, it seems to me you would have to first argue that not everyone wants to be happy, which is a perfectly reasonable contention. Many people subconsciously form the basis of their identities around their plights, and so the eradication of their problems would pose an existential threat to their concept of self:

"If I am no longer this miserable person who hates his job, regrets his past and loathes his spouse, who am I?"

Perhaps not everyone does want to be happy, and that is one of the reasons many folks of fortune are unable to dry their tears with cash. Still, I believe that most people truly do want to be happy, and it is not usually a subconscious avoidance of happiness that prevents them from feeling it...

It is their identification of their money as the source of their happiness, when it should be identified as a symptom of their happiness.

Pure happiness is internal. Places and people and things can certainly bring you happiness, but if this happiness is so fleeting that it fades as soon as the places and people and things do, then how true is it?

The realest kind of raw happiness tends to fall into the subcategory of ~content~. When you are not planning and craving the next stimulation, when you are not pouring your soul into the inanimate and expecting something alive to come from it.

As with most things, it boils down to perspective. Let us engage in a brief hypothetical, with two characters of different kinds of "rich": Rich Man #1 fired his personal assistant for picking out the wrong color of Ferrari. Rich Man #2 tipped his lunch waiter $1000 just for doing his job.

Rich Man #1 may never know happiness, because he looks for it within the depths of his money. To him, the wrong shade of Ferrari equals the wrong shade of emotion. Rich Man #2 will be available to happiness, because he looks for it in the positive ripple effect that his wealth can have on others, and consequently on the world around him. He shared some of his comfort with his waiter, and seeing his waiter's “happiness” in turn made him “happy."

I put quotes around “happiness” and “happy” because they are conditional. If the waiter’s happiness fades just as soon as his $1000 fades, it is not pure happiness. Similarly, if the rich man’s happiness fades as soon as the waiter’s happiness fades, it is not pure happiness.

The waiter can watch his $1000 disappear within a single day of carefree, dopamine-drilled spending. Whether or not his happiness disappears with the money, depends on where he placed his happiness: in the comfort of the $1000 itself, or in the comfort of knowing that there exists such generosity in the world that one man would tip him $1000 just for doing his job.

It should come as no surprise that happiness stands the best chance at survival when it is invested in assets that can never die.