Posted on 05/12/2008 7:59:36 AM PDT by indcons
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but success does. Capitalism, moored in values of hard work, honesty, and fairness, is key.
On July 23, 2000, a forty-two-year-old forklift operator in Corbin, Kentucky, named Mack Metcalf was working a 12-hour nightshift. On his last break, he halfheartedly checked the Sunday paper for the winning Kentucky lottery numbers. He didn’t expect to be a winner, of course—but hey, you never know.
Mack Metcalf’s ticket, it turned out, was the winner of the $65 million Powerball jackpot, and it changed his life forever. What did he do first? He quit his job. “I clocked out right then, and I haven’t been back,” he later recounted. In fact, his first impulse was to quit everything, after a life characterized by problem drinking, dysfunctional family life, and poorly paid work. “I’m moving to Australia. I’m going to totally get away. I’m going to buy several houses there, including one on the beach,” he told Kentucky lottery officials.
Metcalf never worked again. But he never moved to Australia. Instead he bought a 43-acre estate with an ostentatious, plantation-style home in southern Kentucky for more than $1 million. There, he spent his days pursuing pastimes like collecting expensive cars and exotic pets, including tarantulas and snakes.
(Excerpt) Read more at american.com ...
No, but it won't make happiness go away either. ;^)
I’m more than willing to be a case study. Anyone want to give me a bunch of money and see if it makes me happy?
Money does not buy happiness.
It rents it.
True, but part of my definition of success is being able to pay the bills, and, furthermore, have money left over when doing so, and not having to live in an efficiency eating Ramen Noodles to do it. That's the flaw in the "do what you love" philosophy. I love sitting on my a$$ and watching old 80s movies all day...but that doesn't pay the bills... LOL...
Money might not be able to buy happiness, but it can get a pretty good rental deal.
You can’t buy happiness, you can only lease it.
And to elaborate, no, money doesn’t buy happiness, and if you have a certain personality type when you’re broke that is self-destructive, having lots of money can accelerate that lifestyle.
However, my father always said “Money can’t buy happiness, but sure as hell makes misery a lot easier to live with.”
And I’ve always wondered - what about people whose main source of grief is lack of money?
I use to always be broke and I hated it so much that I quit doing it.
Meaningless discussion. What happiness is might be a useful discussion.
My suspicion is that the underlying message is: "Your money isn't really making you happy -- so you won't mind if we hike up your taxes, right? We've got social programs we need to fund that will really make people happy."
Gales of laughter are blowing theough these concepts. What is success?
Eventually, though, I would leave, and I'd enroll in a university somewhere, learn something new, and argue with the professors when they pushed a liberal agenda.
Success = doing something you love and making money doing it.
Money can’t “buy” happiness, but if you aren’t stupid it can buy some relief from stress by making you debt free and able to eat better and afford better medical care and leave an inheritance for children or grandchildren. Your money can also help those less fortunate than you, which usually makes you feel better as well. Money can also buy advertising to counter liberal lunatics. Money can also scholarship low income kids into private school. Money can do alot of very good things if you aren’t greedy and selfish.
The story of this guy who apparently richly drank himself to death is simply the story of a drunken loser.
If it were me:
1. Pay off all debts
2. Travel the world for about a year
3. Come home and figure out what kind of business to start that would at least break even and I would enjoy
Sounds like one of those idiots that we can check back with in a few years and see him broke and working again. He can only hope he had a smart lawyer/counselor that made him invest some for when he spent the rest on cars, snakes, at the lot.
I do not get it I can say that other than maybe a slightly larger house and carrying absolutely no debt ever again, not much would change for me I guess that is why I do not buy lotto tickets.
What if you don’t need to make money?
Assuming you mean someone like the guy here, because otherwise why don’t you need to make money?
I’d say...doing something well and being happy about it, and at least not go broke doing it.
But for “normal” non lottery, non trust fund types, my first definition stands.
Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but poor can sure buy a lot of misery.
Is success related to happiness? Is it different from happiness?
Anybody who thinks money will make you happy, hasn’t got money.
David Geffen
My thoughts -
“Is success related to happiness?”
Yes
“Is it different from happiness?”
Yes
That sounds like a good plan. As much as I like my job and the people I work with, there would always be someone that could do/use my job better than I. Going to school and not worrying about a grade, would be great fun.
I think that's the best idea. Keep yourself ocupied and out of trouble. Do something you like. Try to be self-sustaining.
I never understand the people who get their hands on millions of dollars and then invest it all in some Florida real estate scheme. (What? They're hoping to become rich??) Hey! Where'd my money go??
Interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic, if you’re comfortable sharing them.
Money does not buy happiness, but it does make a downpayment.
Money gives you power...the power to tell people you don’t like to get lost.
“Is success related to happiness?”
Yes
“Is it different from happiness?”
Yes
I would tend to agree with the above. We could leave it at that since obviously we ‘know’ what we mean, or we could figure out what we actually mean.
“Trouble started for Metcalf as soon as he won the lottery. Seeing him on television, a social worker recognized him as delinquent for child support from a past marriage, resulting in a settlement that cost him half a million dollars. A former girlfriend bilked him out of another half million while he was drunk. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism and became paranoid that those around him wanted to kill him. Racked with cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis, he died in December 2003 at the age of forty-five, only about three years after his lottery dream had finally come true. His tombstone reads, “Loving father and brother, finally at rest.”
Very sad, but it is often the case in many lottory winners. It is said, that wealth just magnifies our faults, unless we get our life under control. Thanks for posting this article.
lol!
That was a funny story.
IOW give yourself a reason to get up Monday morning. Something we all need.
(The lack of which may go a long way in explaining the inner city/welfare attitude? Not to mention the early deaths of so many retirees?)
On the other hand, I know many poorer folks who scrounge for a living but are much happier since they enjoy their families and much simpler lifestyles.
Just my opinion...
I have that poster! . . . somewhere!
I started out with nothing in this old world and I've still got most of it left.
There’s a lot of truth in that.
However, I also have known relatively poor people on the brink of suicide due to being unable to pay their mortgage and support their families.
If I hit a $65 million jackpot like the poor sod in the article, I’d instantly quit my job, but I wouldn’t retire. We’d be able to get my wife’s bead-jewelry business off the ground, traveling around to craft shows and selling, striving to turn a profit but not totally crushed if we don’t, and most of all, having fun. (And from past experience, if we did that, I’d be working a lot harder and longer than I do at this IT job!)
I’d be able to do more of what I want to do, not what I have to do to keep the money coming in. In that respect, yes, money can buy happiness. But it buys it indirectly...not by toys or bling, but by freeing you from worry and giving you time to pursue what you really love and find interesting, even if it’s not profitable.
}:-)4
The lottery is nothing more than a tax on the poor. Just last week, I stood in line at a convenience store in my town behind a lady who blew $67 on lottery tickets and scratch-offs.
LOL! Good one!
Read the article.
He died (obviously, not because of the money).
The axiom is incorrect. That is, happiness is not a goal, but the *path* to a goal. Once achieved, it ceases to be, only to be replaced by another goal. The American founding fathers succinctly stated this, by asserting that the *goal* is “the PURSUIT of happiness”, itself, not its attainment, in the Declaration of Independence.
The *goal* itself is not happiness, but “enjoyment”, a far more complicated thing than happiness.
Recruits to the USMC will put themselves through torturous pain and stress to become Marines, and they truly *have* to push themselves to their limits. However, *because* of this, they “enjoy” themselves like no other time in their lives, and they remember this time for the rest of their lives as perhaps the most “enjoyable” of times they ever lived. Certainly not a “happy” time, but a beloved one.
Enjoyment is intensity, passion, romance, failure, confusion, pain, commitment, misery, suffering, disappointment, anger, joy, lust, cruelty, sadism, masochism, fear, comradeship, glee, resistance, scheming, greed, etc., etc., etc.
Do you see the incredible wisdom of the founding fathers? That is, what is the opposite of these things? What inhibits the pursuit of happiness?
Government control. The nanny state. Forced mediocrity and the obsession with safety. Censorship. Repression. Inhibition. Litigation. Temperance. Moderation. Soothing Muzak, gentle pastel colors, and padded walls.
The founding fathers wanted everyone in the United States to be free to experience enjoyment as they saw fit, without government interference. Enjoyment that for many is downright tragic, painful, or even horrifying, but what they, as individuals, seek out and want to experience.
They saw every human life as a work of art in progress, a single, unique work of art that people spent a lifetime in its creation. And they saw that the very worst oppression came from government trying to control this artistry, trying to impose its aesthetic on the people.
Money by itself is a neutral thing. All it can really do is to some extent change the scale of the “trappings” of enjoyment. For there is an inherent sameness to things that few people realize.
Dinner at a fast food restaurant might taste a little different than at a five star restaurant, but nutritionally, generally speaking, little difference. A $20 pair of sunglasses blocks light just as effectively as a $200 pair with a designer label.
In the case of this lottery winner, his friends said that had he not won, he might have lived another 20 years. But all that says is that it might have taken him another 20 years to live with the intensity he did during those two years. The end result being the same, just faster.
Even the brilliant ideas people have, if they were just wealthy, never quite pan out. In most cases, if they become real, they are nothing like in the imagination. If they were so good, mentioning them on the Internet might be enough for them to come into life. Somebody who already has money might agree, and build it themselves.
But perhaps this is the best motivation to want wealth that there is, to create and bring new ideas to life. Because even if your creation doesn’t pan out, at least you would know it wouldn’t, for what good that is. You would have traded your dreams for disappointments.
How about that for a futile exercise?
And even if it does work, it is like happiness. Once it exists, it is done. Time to move on to something new. And if your ideas have run out, what do you do with that money?
The public sees wealthy people who are tacky, obnoxious and ostentatious. But the vast majority are very ordinary, indistinguishable from anyone else. Money for them is just an inflated reserve, used for little other than investment.
It has little or nothing to do with their pursuit of happiness, or even enjoyment. It makes them no better or worse as people, and the intensity of their lives is based on their pursuit of intensity or lack thereof. The money neither helps nor hinders.
Perhaps they have more of the “trappings” of enjoyment, but that does little for their enjoyment itself.
There’s a huge second half to this subject never talked about: Can your neighbor’s money cause your unhappiness? About half the population chooses to react to others success with resentment. This elective behavior is the number one cause of murder, destruction, theft, and voting Democrat.
Or as Mae West said “I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better”
The great majority of people that say money is not important are people that have none.
What money can bring is freedom. Freedom from worry, freedom from anxiety. It brings security and contentment which, along with the other things, can bring happiness.
I am not rich by a long shot but I am very comfortable and have no worries about money. It hasn't always been so and i can promise I am far more content now then when I was “on the way up”
To a creative person, money is time. And in my case, charity. I do what I can in the time I can spare, with the money I have ... but cannot deny that having two elderly parents who desperately need assisted living care and not having the money to provide it, money would certainly solve some of my problems right about now.
It is true, however, that while it may solve the problems I have now, it would then land me with a whole new set of problems. So what? I like a challenge. I’ve been facing and defeating them all my life.
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