SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Money Absolutely Buys Happiness; It’s Foolish To Insist Otherwise

The conquest of happiness and the quest to find out

5 min read

Just now

An old clichéd term that many people are no doubt familiar with is the saying that “money doesn’t buy happiness”. I say this is a cliché, but in reality, I think it’s a cop-out in many instances. People will point to very wealthy people or even express a desire for their own life circumstances to improve, only to be met with people telling them that money won’t fix all their problems. More broadly, I think it leads to a really toxic view of mental health where we’ve almost depoliticised people’s struggles and separated them from their material circumstances.

I find this point to be really annoying and frankly false, mostly because it is often said to people for whom money would absolutely solve a lot of the problems in their lives. Most of the time, you see people struggling in life through some form or another, and it is largely due to financial reasons. People struggle to afford to pay their rent, or they can’t afford to buy the clothes they want, even when these might seem like fairly basic things and not at all frivolous demands for luxury. These are people who are struggling simply to stay afloat and can’t even afford basic necessities much of the time, never mind…