Why 'Money Can't Buy Happiness' Sounds Like Privilege

The stages of wealth that shape our worldview and threaten our future

It’s hard to see the danger of excess when you’re standing in a place of lack.

Someone who just wants to put food on their table, or buy their kid new socks, will struggle to agree with the statement “Money can’t buy you happiness.” Not because they want to be a billionaire, but because they exist deeply in a world of “Lack of money removes my ability to be happy.”

When you're choosing between rent and groceries, hearing someone say 'money isn't everything' feels like a slap in the face.

But here's what's dangerous about this blind spot: the very people who've escaped that struggle often can't see when they've gone too far in the other direction. And that excess is quietly destroying everything we've built.

There’s a reason that “new money” tend to put their new found wealth into things like excessively large houses, or unnecessarily luxurious vehicles. They want to experience the opposite of their former lack, or they want to present themselves as having beaten the struggle to get that necessity.

Let’s explore what that looks like in the two biggest areas of our lives where most of us wish we were “rich”: money and time.

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Money - Removing struggle Isn’t the same as being happy

There are three main stages of financial wealth:

Lack - Your finances are so poor that it’s something you think about often. If you fantasize, it’s often about having more money. If you worry, it’s often about not having enough money. Your lack of money has a direct effect on your health… eating poorly, too busy to exercise, can’t afford medically necessary treatments. Everything would be better if you just had a bit more money. Culturally, this is the “Lower Class” and often looked down upon by the others.

Comfort - Your finances meet your needs, you might think about money, but generally it’s about maintaining what you have. If you fantasize about money, it’s just a desire to have a bit more freedom in your life. Your worries are more likely to be about your health, or your family and are more long term. You’re able to spend money to improve your health, or relationships or increase your comfort. Culturally, this is the “Middle Class.”

Abundance - Your finances are irrelevant. You can spend money on anything without having to make sacrifices. At this stage, money is likely building more wealth, so even when you’re spending, its still increasing through a money generating system. This might be owning your own business, family money or through investments. Your worries will only revolve around things that money can’t address, which may seem like there is nothing to worry about. Culturally, this is the upper class, maybe the 1%.

When you’re unable to pay a bill, or have to skip meals to ensure there’s enough to eat, it’s easy to see that having more money would make you happier. It’s easy to think that money is all that matters.

When you’re comfortably able to live, eat, and entertain yourself, you might think less about money until something arises that could use more. In this place of privilege, it’s easy to think you deserve this or that you earned it, and you may or may not think that more money would improve your life.

When your finances are such that you don’t have to think about money at all, you start to think that anyone who doesn’t have this wealth is just not trying hard enough, or that those who struggle are lazy. The newer your wealth, the more likely you think people should work harder. The older (generational) wealth might not even recognize that the others are struggling.

*There are exceptions inside any of these groups, there are plenty with little financial wealth who are happy for it, there are those who are comfortable but who still want more and there are those with excess who think they can help the less fortunate.

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Time - The most valuable resource available

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we don’t all have the same resources for how those are used. It’s easy to connect Time to Money, as the latter can effectively give you more of the former.

Lacking money, you end up trading time to survive. Maybe it’s having multiple jobs, maybe it’s spending your time cleaning your house, preparing your meals, raising your children or building/repairing your resources.

A healthy, relaxed human, might be able to get by on 6 hours of restful sleep, but a struggling, impoverished person may be waking in stress, sleeping poorly and have no time to address that.

It’s impossible to break down a cultural difference for Time, or to separate it from money. The higher your social class, the more easily you can spend money to increase or improve the time available to you. Eating better, having time to exercise, having time to disconnect from stressful things and recharge, all of them let you be more present throughout your day.

Being able to hire someone to clean and maintain your home and environment gives you more time. Being able to hire someone to prepare your meals, or being able to pay for dining out, will again save you time for other priorities.

There’s no need to belabor the point. Having little money often means you have little time. Having more money often means you’re able to free up time and use the time you do have more effectively.

In the modern world, especially in the United States of America, having more money is very clearly a path to having more time. The fact that there are few (and diminishing) social safety solutions means that having more money also affects your health.

In a word, having more money means having more time. Therefore, money can buy happiness.

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Excess - “Too much” isn’t always a good thing

It’s easy to see that “lack” a difficult place to exist and ‘abundance’ is the ideal. With lack, our world is typically shrunken to a very small circle, maybe down to only ourselves.

“Comfort” could honestly go either way, though it’s easy for comfort to turn into an excess of time, which is dangerous.

“Abundance” can also fall into the trap of an excess of time, though it is also a level where it’s easier to turn into something more charitable.

“Excess” is well past comfort, it also past abundance. “Excess” creates a distortion field where you lose touch with the thing you have too much of.

So, what does that look like? How can excess possibly be bad?

“Too much time” is basically saying that you don’t have any responsibility that you need to prioritize. Maybe you don’t have to go to work, maybe you don’t have to do anything, so you lie around, consume resources and generally disregard your needs.

“Too much money” is a disconnect from what money does, how it helps, or generally understanding that it’s a system that can be used for oppression.

But excess starts to have bigger societal issues that are what I’m really trying to explore. Because there is a state of lack for some, it’s easy to not see where the pursuit of more might lead. It’s also easy to over value people who arrived at a state of excess.

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When “too much” starts to hurt others

In the modern world, there are a few paths of excess that are destructive. The pursuit of excess is typically at the cost of others, and interestingly, has changed very little over thousands of years. Specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins defined in Christianity are every bit as deadly now, regardless of your religion (or lack of.)

• Pride - Excessive view of one’s self.

• Greed - Excessive pursuit of wealth and power.

• Lust - Excessive emphasis on sexual desires

• Envy - Excessive focus on, and desire of, other’s belongings.

• Gluttony - Excessive consumption of food and drink.

• Wrath - Excessive hatred or anger at another person.

• Sloth - Excessive laziness.

The fact that we’ve been talking about the danger of too much since ancient times should mean something.

Too much time, too much power, too much visibility, too much money are all working together to destroy (literally destroy) modern society, and the entire ecosystem of our planet.

Sadly, resources have shifted enough, that a small few in pursuit of “too much” has the power to obliterate the progress of millennia.

The abuse of power to manipulate and adjust entire social classes of people is where it starts, and nobody in a position of power is willing to give up the excesses they enjoy, to stop it.

What you can do today is take a moment to reflect on, or become aware of, how we’re pushed to seek excess rather than comfort. That those we’re taking advice from, or listening to when trying to make sense of the world, are almost all in a position of excess, with something to gain from shifting your perspective.

Be critical when you listen to advice, particularly so if the advice is on a platform with a billionaire who has something to gain by your reaction to that message.

If you’re in a place of comfort, or of abundance, try to connect with those who lack, and try to build one another.

Ironically, the excessive number of people who are being destroyed by the “orphan-crushing-machine” is the only excess that would work in our favor.

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About Me: I’m just a guy that things a lot, writes a little, and is watching with growing alarm as job markets shrink, wealth imbalance grows, marginalized groups get targeted, and other humans prioritize hating one another over taking back their power.

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