Can Money Buy Happiness?

[Asmodeus]

Money can't buy the most important thing (sex) unless you're willing to pay for a prostitute and that's a terrible option.

Sex is the most important thing? So, when you get old and it's no longer an option what replaces it on the happiness meter? TV??

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe nothing, or maybe somebody finds something else that makes them happy. Happiness being so personal it doesn't really matter what our own views of sex or any other thing may be, as it stands as an apparent fact that some people love that shit, whatever that shit is. Just like it stands as an apparent fact that this notion of happiness not being for sale tends to come from the upper crust idly wondering why their wealth hasn't made them happy, happy like the fucking peasants their wealth came from, no less.

Who knows, maybe the reason so many well off people are not happy has something to do with everyone they had to fuck to get there? Behind every great wealth lies a great crime, and the people holding that wealth know the details of that crime better than anyone else. Maybe the reason we sell that line so hard is to keep people from grabbing their pitchforks?

[Ahriman]

Money definitely can't buy happiness but everyone still knows that it's better to have money than not have money. You could be a miserable fuck, and let's say you really like fast food, well having money will allow you to afford all the fast food you want.

[Silver]

I don't know. Many homeless people seem comfortable with their positions of poverty.

[Angrboda]

Given that economic mobility is an illusion, I'm not sure the whole question isn't rather pointless.

[Silver]

Given that economic mobility is an illusion, I'm not sure the whole question isn't rather pointless.

What do you mean by economic mobility?

[Angrboda]

Given that economic mobility is an illusion, I'm not sure the whole question isn't rather pointless.

What do you mean by economic mobility?

The ability to get rich through hard work and ingenuity. The majority of wealth is acquired through direct transfer. The rest are outliers.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know. Many homeless people seem comfortable with their positions of poverty.

Which ones, the half of them who are employed but can't afford housing, the ones who can't find jobs or a house...or the ones who are mentally ill and too poor for care outside of a prison....likely for the crime of being poor in public?

[Silver]

I don't know. Many homeless people seem comfortable with their positions of poverty.

Which ones, the half of them who are employed but can't afford housing, the ones who can't find jobs or a house...or the ones who are mentally ill and too poor for care outside of a prison....likely for the crime of being poor in public?

Just the ones I see when I manage to step outside once in a blue moon.

[The Grand Nudger]

Good chance they're in the latter category, in that case. We don't see the homeless, or even notice them as such, as a rule. What we see is the mental illness we decided we would no longer provide for as a public service. For awhile, alot of them were vets. It became such a big issue that real government action kicked in and reduced the rate by half over ten years. Mostly through direct assistance and assisted housing. Poverty is a part of a vicious cycle of illness and despair. People aren't poor, for example, because they make bad financial decisions. They make bad financial decisions because they are poor. Because they are stressed, under duress, and always motivated to compromise. Add in a little ptsd...maybe some opioid addiction....et voila, bridge camps full of trained killers whose greatest financial opportunity and best economic decision is actually to rob you. Good thing they're not all sociopaths, or we'd have a real problem.