All my life, I have heard people say that poor people are happier than rich people, but I don’t believe it, and I never have. It seems like it is mostly rich people who say that. When Irving Berlin wrote the song ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’, he was the richest and highest paid songwriter in the world. The same was true when the Beatles wrote ‘I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.’ I’ve met poor people who believed that rich people are unhappy because “they have too much money to be happy”, but if having a lot of money really made people unhappy, then rich people would give away all their money, but they rarely do that. Poverty does not make people happy, and money does not make people unhappy. As my Uncle Irv Tarses (who was rich) used to say: “Whether you’re rich or poor, it’s nice to have money.”
DOESN’T GREAT WEALTH MAKE SOME PEOPLE UNHAPPY?
Yes. Sometimes. Rich people can afford to do things that would make anyone unhappy. Look at the photo below of 3 girls in China around 1900. The girl in the middle is rich. Her 2 companions are poor. The barefoot girl on the left is a slave. The girl on the right wearing shoes is a Christian servant. The rich girl in the middle has bound feet. She is crippled and can only walk slowly and for short distances. The 2 poor girls are her crutches. Foot binding was a common practice among rich people in China. Rich people can also afford to spend huge sums of money on quack doctors and quack medicine. A lot of famous rich people have died from that, like Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. By the time Steve Jobs accepted the fact that you can’t cure cancer with exotic fruit juice and acupuncture treatments in Switzerland; his cancer had spread to the point that it was inoperable.
WHAT IS PRICE GOUGING?
The California state legislature passed a law in 2019 limiting most rent increases to 10% a year. Anything more than that is defined as ‘price gouging’. But what is ‘price gouging’? It currently costs between $3 and $4 to manufacture a vial of insulin, which according to Good Rx Health currently retails nationally for between $175 and $350. See: Insulin Prices. Now, it is possible to live without an apartment or paying rent. There are hundreds of people living in RVs in west Berkeley. However, diabetics die, and die quickly, without insulin. The patent on insulin expired generations ago so any pharmaceutical company can manufacture insulin without permission or paying a royalty. So this means that an 11% rent increase in California is ‘price gouging’ but charging $300 for a vial of insulin that cost $3 to make is ‘health care’.