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Originally Posted by Manx
Sorry, no.
Having money to pay off a credit card, move closer to work to cut commute times, pay for a better school for your child, take a relaxing vacation to the Caribbean = happiness. It is not Ultimate And Everlasting Happiness™ - but it provides an environment of lower stress. Lower stress = higher happiness. Money buys lower stress. Money buys happiness.
Whether the people you mentioned were happy is entirely unknown. Whether they were anti-capitalist is irrelevant. None of them lived in a capitalist society or according to capitalistic methods of living. Their entire relationship with money was fundamentally different than the average person living in the U.S., so they have nothing to do with this conversation.
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One last attempt and then you are free to have the last word.
To just use ONE example, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) had great wealth, but he forsook it all, knowing that it had no relevance to his happiness.
This is VERY relevant to our discussion.
Lower stress and higher happiness are NOT equal. To prove this, I meerly have to provide one example of someone with low stress that is not happy.
Also, more money does not equate to lower stress. (I can provide examples of people with a lot of money who have high stress.) What it
does do is remove SOME stressors, which I have listed a few of.
As to your examples:
Pay off credit card: Why is it high in the first place? Paying for a trip to the Caribbean? Eating out? Attempts to buy happiness?
Cut commuter time: Why are you commuting? Could you work closer to home? Or is the high paying job accross town and you want the bucks?
Better school: Is it too much time to spend working with your child, making sure their homework is done? Are you working late across town finishing a project for a big promotion (and raise) instead of going to a parent teacher conference?
Vacation in the Caribbean: would a local (read, less expensive) vacation, seeing the beauty of the area in which you live not serve to lower your stress? Why is the Caribbean "better" at lowering your stress? Is it because it is the "Caribbean"?
In otherwords, there are plenty of people that manage to be happy in the situations you've described without having the money, while there are plenty of people who have money in the same situations and are NOT happy.
This last fact alone logically proves that money does NOT buy happiness.
[austin]And I'm spent...[/austin]