Column: Money can't buy happiness

By Charles Austin
Oct. 13, 2008

I feel sorry for rich people sometimes, and I get the feeling that I'm the only one. With all the movements for social equality across different genders and races, it's become politically incorrect to mock someone for being a woman or being Mexican or something. But, somehow, it's completely OK to hate people based on their class.

In this country, we're supposed to believe in this ambiguous American dream that definitely involves happiness and probably involves making money. And, in spite of this, I feel like pretty much everyone I know mocks rich people when given the opportunity. I don't think it's about jealousy, either. It just seems like the right thing to do to mock a rich kid driving by in a $50,000 car that we would probably buy, too, if we could afford it.

The idea here is that, somehow, having money makes people stupid and vain when, in reality, I think it just brings out the potential for idiocy and vanity that already exists within all of us. This is why I wish that we could all be rich for a short time, just to teach us a lesson about ourselves. I think most people, given the chance, would behave exactly like the rich people whose behavior they think is so reprehensible.

Another common misconception about rich people is that their lives are somehow made infinitely easier by having money. This is true on some levels, considering they probably aren't going to be struggling to pay bills, and they won't be starving any time soon. But I definitely think money makes a lot of people sad, detached and remorseful. This is why winning the lottery so often ruins people's lives.

When we assume that rich people's lives must be really easy, we're unconsciously making the assumption that wealth equals happiness, a belief most of us probably pretend to reject but secretly believe to be true. But, in general, in order to make a lot of money, you have to compromise other aspects of your life, whether it's your love life, spending time with your family or even having a family at all.

And I imagine that it's probably extremely difficult to raise rich kids. I'm sure it's hard enough to raise kids without being rich, but I think it's much easier to teach children responsibility when they basically don't have a choice about how much money they are allowed to spend. If anything helps to illustrate this point, it's MTV.

Pretty much every show on MTV is about spoiled rich children being vapid and vain. It's a lot easier to entertain people via vanity rather than, say, philanthropy, hence why Paris Hilton has had multiple TV series of her own and Warren Buffet hasn't.

It seems to me like shows such as "The Hills" or "My Super Sweet 16" should inspire sympathy within people, because of the fact that these kids never learned lessons about responsibility, vanity and happiness that they probably should have learned by this point in their lives. But, instead, these shows just further exacerbate our hatred towards the upper class. We're offended that these kids are so frivolous, when being rich was never a choice they themselves made in the first place. If there's any general moral to be garnered from television shows about rich kids, it's that having money doesn't make their lives any easier; it just makes them more confusing.

Generally speaking, we all embrace consumer culture, and I just think it's strange that we ridicule the people who are best at embracing our own culture.

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Column: Money can't buy happiness

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