this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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I forget the exact numbers on this, but net worth correlates pretty strongly with happiness until about $200k and then the correlation drops off. If we were a rational society, we would make bringing everyone up to that level of economic comfort the goal and take away everything above that.
Not worrying about normal bills, being able to have some savings for if some home appliance breaks, being able to go grovery shopping without having to look at the price...
Thats my financial goal in life
I don't know your life but that goal sounds achievable.
Read in semi-serious voice:
"Money can't buy happiness" is capitalist propaganda. Money can and does buy happiness but this line is supposed to make the rubes less jealous of their exploiters as to minimize the rube-pitchfork association.
This is kinda a good example of how everything filters through material class relations, until something that was radical can end up supporting the system.
A study of Christianity (and I'm sure most religions) is very interesting for this dynamic, a thousand years' tug of war between liberatory and repressive interpretations of doctrine, each subsuming the other in different ways (usually favoring the elites).
Until the 13th century, the Church exalted poverty as a holy state and engaged in distributions of alms, trying to convince the rustics to accept their situation and not envy the rich. In Sunday sermons, priests were prodigal with tales like that of the poor Lazarus sitting in heaven at the side of Jesus, and watching his rich but stingy neighbor burning in flames.The exaltation of sancta paupertas ("holy poverty") also served to impress on the rich the need for charity as a means for salvation. This tactic procured the Church substantial donations of land, buildings and money, presumably to be used for distribution among the needy, and it enabled it to become one of the richest institutions in Europe. But when the poor grew in numbers and the heretics started to challenge the Church's greed and corruption, the clergy dismissed its homilies about poverty and introduced many 'distinguo." Starting in the 13th century, it affirmed that only voluntary poverty has merit in the eyes of God, as a sign of humility and contempt for material goods; this meant, in practice, that help would now be given only to the "deserving poor," that is, to the impoverished members of the nobility, and not to chose begging in the streets or at city gates. The latter were increasingly looked upon with suspicion as guilty of laziness or fraud.
From Caliban and the Witch