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Comment by rafabulsing | Hacker News Reader

How does "lack of money can create unhappiness" downplay the effects of economic stress on mental health?

"unhappiness" is quite minimizing of trauma, burnout, and suicide. It's like saying "losing a child can create unhappiness".

I don't know, I really don't feel like it is. I think it's pretty clear that the choice of "unhappiness"/"sadness" is to clearly put it in opposition to the popular "money doesn't bring happiness" cliche, not out of some absolute claim on the magnitude of the suffering the lack of money could bring (so, merely sadness, but not agony, desolation, suffering, or any other stronger negative emotion one could choose).

It just makes the propositional logic of the sentence clearer:

X might not imply Y, but !X implies !Y

I'm glad the sentence structure is pleasing to your logical brain. As a counterpoint, my family has generational trauma from decades of economic stress and that cliche feels minimizing to me.

I live in a third world country, and although I'm (by our standards) doing pretty well right now, both my parents come from very little. My mom, as a young woman, at one point even lost everything she had in a fire. I was fortunate enough (through their hard work, and undoubtedly some luck) to mostly experience economic stability growing up, though we did still go through a rough patch when I was a kid.

The person I'm engaged with, and their family, had/has it even worse, and it's not hard to see the ways it affected and still affects them.

My point being, I'm no stranger to a family history of financial hardship. I'm sorry for whatever you and your family have had to endure. But, politely, screw off with the implication that the only way I feel the way that I do/say the things that I say are fruit of some privileged upbringing that couldn't possibly understand money problems.

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