“Money can’t buy happiness,” I stated once when I was a callow 18-year-old teaching an evening English course in the late 1960s Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Several of my students, mainly secretaries and business people, nodded in agreement.
But one student, a woman in her 30s who seldom participated voluntarily, suddenly responded with fury. “You wouldn’t say that if you had ever been really poor,” she said, her face reddening with emotion. She went on, verbally pinning me to the wall as she described the pains and humiliations of growing up in a rural household where siblings died of malnutrition and where 40-year-old parents looked as if they were 75.
Some of the other students tried to hush her, but several nodded silently in agreement. Finally, she stopped to catch her breath, I mumbled some abject apology and we went on. But I never forgot the experience,
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at a local college on the economic situation of South American countries since their return to democracy in the 1980s. In the question period, a student confronted me: “You frequently referred to rates of economic growth. Do you consider economic growth to be synonymous with development?” I answered that I did not, but went on to recount my incident with the angry student 31 years earlier.
I wish I could meet that Brazilian woman again, to better resolve our confrontation. In a way, we were both correct. My observations of life continue to convince me that human beings have complex spiritual and emotional needs. Truly, money cannot ensure happiness. But it is also clear that a lack of money needed to buy the basic needs and wants of life can cause pain and frustration.
I have a much easier life than my grandparents, who migrated to a bare, windswept farm on the Buffalo Ridge in southwest Minnesota nearly a century ago. They did hard physical work every day of their lives, buried three infant children and never again saw the homes and families they had left behind. It was particularly hard on my grandmother, who was an educated person and had been brought up in a more genteel household than my grandfather, who was from a peasant farm. They both died in their mid-60s of diseases that would be treated easily today.
I have only had a few days in my life during which I have worked as hard as they did every day. I have a comfortable house, gadgets of all sorts, books and magazines in excess, and I have traveled to three continents. Neither I, nor any of my children, have ever been seriously ill. But I am not sure that I am any happier than my grandparents.
In this holiday season, Americans once again are engaged in an orgy of buying things. Many of us will spend more than we should for our own financial well-being. But our culture emphasizes that having things will make us happier. We all see commercials showing someone loading up a van with electronic gadgets while a voice-over says, “It’s going to be a very merry Christmas at somebody’s house.”
But would a return to poverty make us any happier? We might get more clarity about relative values. People who experienced periods of deprivation, in war or the Great Depression, often speak about that as a positive aspect. Few, however, would choose to repeat the experience.
During my lifetime, economic growth boomed in Brazil for two decades and in Taiwan and South Korea for four. Moreover, Korea and Taiwan were much more successful than Brazil in extending growth to the benefit of the general population. Public health, broad-based education, decent housing and sanitation all are more broadly distributed in these Asian “tigers” than in Brazil or most other Latin American countries. Are Koreans or Taiwanese happier than Brazilians?
I don’t know. Philosopher John Rawls proposed a rule for comparing societies. Which you would choose to be a member of if you did not know in advance just what position in either society you would actually get? Following Rawls’ rule, I’d choose Taiwan or Korea. Preferences for bossa nova and kimchee aside, most people, Brazilians, Koreans or Americans, would choose Korea, where average incomes are three times higher than in Brazil and much more evenly distributed.
No, money cannot buy happiness. And yes, it is better to have enough money to buy the basic needs and wants of life than not to have it. These are good lessons to keep in mind as we count our blessings and end the year.
© 2000 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.