It isn't a trick question.
The answer is an obvious...
No!
But hold on a minute.
What brought you to that conclusion? Like most people, you have been conditioned and you answered intuitively on what you know, using your automatic system 1 habitual thought process, without actually considering all the factors involved. You are answering based on peer and cultural learning, as you believe you should answer, without thinking about all the other alternative variables and conditions that never came to your mind. You believe your answer is right, because it feels right to you. It feels like the ethical answer too, the one where happiness isn't dependent on how much money is in the pocket.
Your feelings are wrong.
This isn't to say that one can't be happy without money, but the odds get stacked against happiness, because without money in the world in which we live, life becomes harder. Not harder because more value is being accomplished through the actions performed, but harder at the survival level, at the core, at the points that matter to us - like paying the heating bill so our children aren't cold, or buying food they don't go to bed hungry. Harder because the fear of an unexpected expense means being unable to provide.
Poor people are not as smart.
What a disgusting thing to write.
But it is true.
“Being poor, for example, reduces a person’s cognitive capacity more than going one full night without sleep. It is not that the poor have less bandwidth as individuals. Rather, it is that the experience of poverty reduces anyone’s bandwidth.”
― Sendhil Mullainathan, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Poor people are worse parents.
What a disgusting thing to write.
But it is true.
“One broad theme emerges from decades of this research: the poor are worse parents. They are harsher with their kids, they are less consistent, more disconnected, and thus appear less loving. They are more likely to take out their own anger on the child; one day they will admonish the child for one thing and the next day they will admonish her for the opposite;”
― Sendhil Mullainathan, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
These are not necessarily true for every individual, but the likelihood increases that cognitive ability is negatively affected and a parent is under stresses that get carried through to interactions with a child. And it is the likelihood that we have to consider, because just like the fools who say "money doesn't buy happiness", they haven't considered that we are humans, and humans are not rational creatures, they are animals that misunderstand, conflate, confuse and suffer circumstance, whether the conditions are real or imagined.
“The poor have their own planes in the air. They are juggling rent, loans, late bills, and counting days till the next paycheck. Their bandwidth is used up in managing scarcity.”
― Sendhil Mullainathan, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Cut me some slack!
“Here we see that slack provides a hidden efficiency. It gives us room to maneuver, to reshuffle when we err. Slack gives us room to fail.”
― Sendhil Mullainathan, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Ever lived through a life and death experience that depended entirely on you succeeding? If you have and you are reading this, well done, you made it. However, do you want to live every moment like that, where you feel that if you put a foot wrong, say an incorrect word, if you fail - you will lose everything that is dear to you?
Unlikely.
Yet, this is what a scarcity mindset brings to the table. A life of living on the edge. Like a racecar driver pushing to the limits, at every waking moment, through every corner of life, never being able to take the foot off the peddle, tap the brake, or miss the apex. Any slip, means to crash. And if you have some, your loved ones are in the back of the car. Your failure, is worn by them too.
Money might not make us happy, but it is also good to consider what kinds of things make us sad. The most important thing might be our relationship with others or our experiences, but what happens to our relationships and experiences when we are unable to provide enough money to cover needs? What happens if I can't afford to get winter clothing for my daughter? What happens if my experiences in life are dominated by my attempt to survive, to provide, but always failing?
Am I happy?
In the world in which we operate, money scarcity has physical implications on our opportunity and the opportunity of those we are responsible for. We can try our hardest to put on a brave face for those we love, but watching them suffer a lack of opportunity due to our inability to provide, probably doesn't fill most people with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Nor does attempting with all energy available to provide for them and still failing.
Happiness is a state of mind.
And therefore, like any state, requires the right conditions. Those conditions can vary from person to person, but there is a lot of overlap amongst humans, and not having enough is one of those influencing factors that reduces the chance of happiness. People seem to believe that the mind is something that can just be changed, but it is not the case. Changing the mind in unfavorable conditions is going to take willpower, and willpower is another scarce resource. The more tired we become, the less of it we have. And, being poor is tiring.
It is no wonder that the poor are more likely to be overweight, isn't it?
It might not be about the price of healthy food at all, but rather the lack of willpower at the end of the day to say no to the junk food that tastes so good, even though there is nothing of value in it. Yet, we blame fat people for their bad choices, when it might not be a choice at all, because at the time they made the decision, they didn't have the mental capacity, the mental bandwidth, to actually choose. Instead, they used their system one brain, their fast thinking, inaccurate brain, to make a judgement for them and that process is all about speed, and making the easiest decision possible. The prioritization for food isn't for healthy, it is for fast and satisfying now - not in a day, month or ten years from now.
Scarcity doesn't just not provide the slack for errors, it also doesn't provide the space to prepare for the future. So, daily decisions, made on autopilot or under cognitive load or physical duress, keep making decisions that will leave a person worse off in the future, with a degraded body, self-esteem, mind, and still struggling financially, still unable to make those ends meet, still stressed. The conditions have gotten worse, making happiness even more likely, as the knees ache, but the work to survive goes on.
Surviving life, isn't a purposeful life.
Surviving might be at our animalistic core, but our higher cognitive ability means that we are looking for secondary factors to satisfy us. But, living in monetary scarcity means that we have to compromise heavily on those greater goals in order to satisfy our base needs. And, watching others we care about impacted negatively is also going to impact on us negatively. It might be possible for an individual to be happy watching a loved one starve, or die of illness due to unavailability of healthcare, but from the outside looking in, what would you think of that person?
You know what is interesting?
Happiness is in reflection.
You can't actually be happy in the moment, it is only in reflection of the moment that happiness can be achieved, because it takes being being aware that the conditions for happiness have been met. But if there is no moment to reflect, or when there are moments of space to think at all, thoughts are with the upcoming cost of school books, or repairing the washing machine again - with necessities - then happiness gets pushed out of mind. And it is even more out of mind, because those "valuable experiences" aren't the type that evoke happiness anyway.
So, can money make you happy?
No.
But it can buy the conditions to facilitate the experiences and relationships that can lead to happiness. It buys the space in the day, the room to think, the chance to try and fail. It takes care of the medical expenses, it puts food on the table, and shirts on backs. It is ridiculous to me when people so quickly and adamantly say that money doesn't buy happiness, and in the next breath, talk about how well they understand human needs. They are talking about their ideals, not the realities of human nature and experience. They talk of being empathetic, yet seem to spend no time actually considering the needs and wants of others at all.
They are naïve.
Money can improve the conditions for happiness, but it suffers from diminishing returns. The question isn't whether money can buy happiness, but rather, how much money is required to buy it. The amount will change from person to person, but several studies have looked at this and the answer seems to be consistently,
More than most people have.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Note: This book is now on my "to read" list.
― Sendhil Mullainathan, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
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