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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

As the old saying goes: Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski. And you never see an unhappy person riding a jet ski.

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Money can't buy happiness, but it prevents one of the worst things in the world for people/families - financial stress. I bet financial stress is one of the major causes of divorce/destruction of families, child underdevelopment ( mentally/physically ), crime, suicide, etc.

Can't be happy when you can't afford medicine for yourself and your kids, can't pay for food, can't pay the rent/mortgage, etc.

Money can't buy happiness, but lack of money causes a lot of unhappiness.

As someone with a jet ski, it is indeed hard to be unhappy on a jet ski.

I always heard the 2 greatest days of owning a jet ski are the first day, and the day you finally sell it. I've had several people say they get old REALLY fast. Kind of like pools, get a friend/neighbor with a pool and a jet ski, now THAT's happiness.

I dunno. They say that about boats, much bigger than jet skis.[0]

Jet Skis are pretty easy to load/unload and store compared to a bigger boat. Also much easier to maintain, most of the jet skis I've ridden have all been small 2-stroke engines. Bigger than a lawn mower engine, but not as powerful as most motorcycle engines (except for the bigger wave runners, those are 4-stroke motorcycle engines). Like a go-cart engine. Yes, they require maintenance, but also probably the simplest engine you could possibly maintain.

[0]: https://www.myboatlife.com/2010/12/two-best-days-of-boaters-...

That's rubbish. A lot of rich people suffer from depression, to the point of suicide.

That's missing the point of the saying.

Beyond the surface-level pithiness of the joke, the point is that having money may not guarantee happiness, but it makes it a lot easier to distract oneself with viscerally pleasant experiences and engage in new hobbies that may in fact lead to genuine happiness.

Hmmm. Bourdain, Robin Williams. I don’t think you can distract yourself from depression.

Robin Williams actually had a degenerative brain disease. I know a lot of the news didn't wait long enough for that information about his situation to come out, but it's on Wikipedia.

I appreciate that it says you never SEE an unhappy person riding a jet ski.

Whether or not it generates happiness, money can make happiness more visible. That's worth a moment of reflection.

They did a study once that indicated the first 95k buys happiness, but money after that, not so much.

I have my own little saying that I always say in response to that saying: Lack of money can definitely cause unhappiness though

You don't need to look further than Maslow's hierarchy of needs to see why, when you don't have enough money to reliably fulfill some of the most fundamental needs like shelter and food, it's going to severely hinder your self actualization. Forget about moving on to the more psychological higher-level needs when you are worrying about where you are going to sleep tonight. It's easy to understand why happiness might be very hard to reach for individuals who don't have enough money to cover their basic needs

This is the part people fail to recognize: in our society, money is an abstraction that provides necessities and wants. If you cant provide necessities, then of course you're unhappy. Many people can't and most everyone cuts corners and makes sacrifices to meet needs.

Yes - money is directly related to happiness until you're making 'enough', for some locally defined value of enough. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/02/26/d...

Another hidden need that is studiously ignored is having enough margin that you can help others. I think that something that hits men very hard when they are struggling financially.

Also keep an eye on margin in terms of time, not just money. Maybe also emotional energy.

"Money isn't everything, not having it is." -Kanye

Or, money is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for happiness.

Same with spicy food. Hard to be upset with some really spicy hot pot.

making a living wage, and I would hardly call $1 above the current min wage a "living" wage, has nothing to do with having more money to buy things with and everything to do with feeling psychologically safe from spiraling into debt and possible homelessness.

the lack of a psychological safety net is one of the most anxiety inducing things about American capitalism. we underestimate as a society how damaging it is because it's so hard to measure.

> we underestimate as a society how damaging it is because it's so hard to measure

I'm not sure I agree with that. It has been known within public health for decades that poverty is an important predictor of life expectancy and quality of life.

The real problem in the US appears to be a deep cultural belief in self-sufficiency, and an accompanying unwillingness to vote for politicians who support implementation of said safety nets.

Well this is actually one of the biggest issues in Eastern Europe. The belief the state should take care of its citizens ( the safety net you are talking about ). The truth is only populist crooks get elected and only come up with shortsighted inefficient solutions (and half of the budget gets stolen).

Mmm, seems like a stretch to blame problems in Eastern Europe on the belief in a safety net - Western Europe/Scandinavia also believes in a safety net but doesn't have the same problems.

What makes you think it does not ? It is just on a different scale.

Sure, in that case so is the US and everywhere else, which means the social safety net is completely irrelevant.

> It has been known within public health for decades

If public health officials were running the planet, we'd all be better off.

This misses the point. There is no one "money" in our psychology.

Food money is not the same as rent money and is not the same as money allotted for a fancy holiday.

House safety, food safety, personal safety are what humans worried about for thousands of years before money even existed.

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