Can Money Buy Happiness?

Prompt: Can Money buy you Happiness?

That’s a definite no for me. In fact, I would go as far as to say that money can’t buy happiness for any human, at least in the way that people traditionally ask the question. For many people, this question brings to mind material wealth to an extreme, and whether that would make someone happy. Time after time, the myth has been disproven that having extravagant amounts of money to spend on mostly material things will make you happy. Instead, I would like to think about this question in a different light.

Paradoxically, I do actually believe that more money would make many people happier. The reason I am so vehement that more money wouldn’t make me happy is because I am a middle class person who has all of my basic needs met. I have all of the opportunities I could ask for, and while I don’t claim that my life is always easy, almost none of my problems could be solved by gaining more money, and I don’t think having more material wealth would make me happier either. The same doesn’t hold true for billions of people around the world whose basic needs aren’t being met.

 When I say basic needs, I mean things even beyond food and shelter, like healthcare, a stable job, a good education. I believe that everyone deserves to have those needs met, and that once met their quality of life will increase to the degree that one could claim money made them happy. That is not to say that people below the poverty line aren’t happy sometimes or are incapable of happiness, but I argue that many of their worst problems are caused by not having enough money.

A concept that has always interested me is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you haven’t heard of this theory before, simply put, Maslow argues that everyone has a hierarchy of needs (the bottom being physiological needs like food and shelter) and when one tier is not being met, then all the rest above that tier can’t be priorities to the person. For example, someone who is food insecure will almost exclusively be worried about getting enough food, and might not have the capacity to make sure that their emotional or psychological needs are being met. This is not to say that a food insecure person isn’t happy, just that they could be more happy if they didn’t have to worry about getting enough food and were able to pursue the life or livelihood that they wanted to. 

Yet my analysis leaves out many people whose means are being met but are still profoundly unhappy with themselves or their life. In this instance, more money probably would have little to no effect on their happiness. However, this well off person also might have more opportunities to get help than a person lower down on Maslow’s hierarchy, because they could more likely afford therapy or some other type of self help. In this instance, money doesn’t buy this person happiness, but instead provides the opportunity this person needs to potentially become more happy.

The easy answer to the question of money buying happiness is no, that of course happiness doesn't stem from the amount of money you have, nor is it affected by the amount of luxuries you can afford. To a large extent, I agree with the notion that having some arbitrary amount of money does not automatically make someone happy or unhappy. But when someone doesn’t have enough money for a shelter, for food, for the hospital bill, how are they supposed to focus on the things that do make them happy? In essence, it seems to me that there is some amount of money that everyone needs to achieve their full potential for happiness, but going above that sum would not substantially increase anyone’s happiness.