[at-l] Can money buy happiness article.

[stephensadams at hotmail.com (Steve Adams)]

Jim,

Reference your post, dated 6-18-03.

I haven’t read the article, so I may be way off base.  I am responding to 
the principle subject heading, “Can money buy happiness(?)”

You advise, “I'm here to tell you that enough money (the exact amount varies 
depending on your lifestyle expectations) will buy you freedom and freedom 
definitely = happiness.”

To make the statement which you made, you personally must have already 
acquired “enough money.”  If you haven’t yet arrived at that point, you are 
only speculating.

Secondly, you must also believe, to justify your statement, that less money 
would not have bought your freedom.

Thirdly, you must feel that you are happy.

Fourthly, you must attribute the happiness which you feel to your purchased 
freedom.

There is a song verse something like, “Freedom is just another name for 
nothing left to lose.”  I suspect this is true for some people.  (I’ll call 
them “enlightened,” and betray my bias.)  This is also the antithesis of 
your observation.  It is the feeling some hikers get (although an illusion) 
when they’re out there.  [I’ll acknowledge, hikers acquired enough 
expendable money to outfit themselves, and; they temporarily live in their 
own artificially created environment.]

I have retired.  I envy no one.  I am happy.  You may say, I have “enough 
money;” that my “exact amount” is sufficient, due to my “lifestyle 
expectations,” to buy my “freedom.”  But isn’t this circular?  Anyone who 
has found happiness, by your definition, has first acquired enough money?

If your argument is circular, it has no meaning.

If your argument isn’t circular, a slight paraphrasing, which "almost" says 
the same thing, comes perilously close to, "money can buy happiness, if 
you’re sufficiently shallow to equate material acquisition with happiness."

Steve

P.s.  I’m uneasy; my logic may not be as tight as it should be.  The 
foregoing may contain major holes.

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