“It is not immoral to be a billionaire. But it is immoral to die as one.”
That was what the famed ethicist Peter Singer said in a debate at Oxford Union. And that was the debate I had last weekend with a couple friend of mine who run a home for troubled youths.
He pointedly asked me, “When is enough enough?” In other words, he said there is a threshold of self-sufficiency where you don’t need any more to be happy. He pitched it at $75,000 a year.
I did some googling after that, and he was right. Two renowned psychologist/economist, Daniel Kahneman and August Deaton, published a study in 2010 on subjective well-being and income in a sample of 450,000 US adults.
And their two basic findings are, first, ”life got better in terms of happiness with more money, up until around $75,000 of annual income; after that, happiness flattened out so that extra income made no difference.”
The second finding is that “individuals continued to feel that they are more successful on the ladder of life as their income increased.”
Yes, poor people are not as content as the richer people, however, “higher income buys life satisfaction but not happiness.”
Imagine that, happiness flattened out at $75k (or more depending on cost of living) and the more you acquire doesn’t bring more happiness, just more life satisfaction. Are the two largely the same? Does one carry a deeper meaning for living than the other?
Anyway, the main issue is, in our relentless acquisition of wealth, will we reach a stage where enough is never enough and we share the same sentiment captured in the biting words of Gore Vidal - “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies”?
Let me take a short break here to share this heart warming news about the recent union of a billionaire and a school teacher. The ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Ms Mackenzie Scott, has married Dan Jewett, a teacher at private Lakeside School.
Dan said that he is helping Scott to give away her billions more expeditiously. That was actually her complaint. She has even employed a team to “figure out how to give away her money faster.”
So far, just last year, that is, after her divorce in 2019, she has given away US$6 billion. It was a record year in the history of charity. Her ex-husband Jeff Bezos said: “Dan is such a great guy, and I am happy and excited for the both of them.”
Jeff currently holds the title of the richest man on planet earth. His net wealth rose to US$176.6 billion.
And Dan himself said: “In a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know - and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others.”
So, let’s go back to that $75k threshold and that notion that it is immoral to die as a billionaire. Can it be said that we see a contrast here (between the former Bezoses)? That is, one is happily married and giving away her billions (she was worth US$53.5 billion) and the other may very well die remaining a billionaire?
Where do you then arbitrarily place the threshold? In other words, are you deemed immoral if you are dead and buried with a billion dollars in your coffers and considered happy as can be when you hit that $76k mark?
Of course, let’s not be naive. While we sometimes scream “Show me the Money!”, the reality is, it is not about the money. And I don’t expect any serious, thinking individual to be drawing any threshold or line when it comes to happiness, contentment and morality or immorality?
A study like that has to be seen in its proper context and perspective. Kahenman and Deaton are no neophyte wishful thinkers.
Mind you, one won a Nobel price in economics, when his area of specialty is waitforit...human behaviour (And isn’t the study of economics, or for that matter, any academic discipline, the study of human behaviour as a whole?)
If we take the example of Scott who is thinking of all ways and means to give her wealth away at double quick time, I would suppose that she will still be relatively much more well off financially than the billions of people on earth, struggling, especially at this time, to make ends meet.
She is clearly a multi-billionaire and some may say that her altruism puts her ex-husband to shame when it comes to conspicuous charity. She is also on her way to die a normal millionaire or multimillionaire, so to speak. In terms of relative net wealth, she is hands-down much poorer.
So, when it comes to the debate with my friends, who themselves are exemplary in giving, the anonymous kind of charity, what can we say about the billionaires living amongst us? Are they guilty of never having enough? Are they just satisfied but not happy, like a hunter dragging back his kill for the day but never finding contentment or the happiness that Scott is experiencing with Dan?
I guess nothing is quite that simple. Morality in a sense is quite a social construct and it changes in hue and shades when civilisation advances on its own complexity. And happiness, a peace of mind and contentment are largely subjective, depending also on the context, that is, one’s surroundings.
There is no line or threshold to cross between being moral and immoral, or happy and unhappy, or having peace of mind and a mind always pissed. Take note, you can be miserably poor as well as happily rich, and somewhere in the middle, you are stoned envious, never settling, never satisfied.
But one lesson I have learnt from the union of Dan and Scott is that enduring love depends neither on status, fame nor wealth. Call it romanticism, but I call it a reality we will have to confront at some point in our life.
And yes, the heart no doubt wants what it wants but when the taming of the shrewd is none other than love unchanging, you can expect the hearts to join as one, beat as one and overcome as one. That is the flourishing of love for a lifetime in an authentic union of hearts.
Alas, there is no price tag for that kind of happiness and contentment. It is beyond life satisfaction. It is beyond billions. It is beyond the relentless pursuit of things impermanent and transient.
And if you should die with that, you will be the happiest person on earth. It would be a life of true moral victory, not by the changing moralistic standards of men, but by the benchmark of what is timeless, eternal and of unsurpassed beauty.
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