google “happiness relative wealth” and you’ll find lots of links to studies. You don’t need to be rich to be happy, you need to be doing better than those around you. You can protest all you want, about how you don’t care how you stack up next to your neighbor, but it’s pretty unlikely you’re being truthful with yourself. We’re hard-wired tobe this way, something about survival and brain stuff and reproduction. We compete locally. There probably are a few enlightened souls here and there who are truly above the fray, but the local realtors, attorneys, engineers? probably not…we all probably wan tto be doing at least as good as the mean, and preferably a lot better. And certainly better than the average slob in the area.
And yeah, if you could be the local village warlord in somalia, you’d probably be damned happy! But if you just showed up with a bunch of traveler’s checks? not so much….money being just shorthand for power in our local neck of the woods…
