Preview

Margaret Wente's We 'Re So Rich, Why Aren' T We Happy?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
653 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Margaret Wente's We 'Re So Rich, Why Aren' T We Happy?
In “We’re so Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy?” by Margaret Wente, the author is describing a situation that happened to her and, also, it’s reasons and consequences. She is telling about the things that can make us happy, although, that happiness would not last long because people are obsessed with things to buy because of the society. She provides an example of a sink that she would buy for her new house; the sink that she never saw before and that costs a lot of money, however, it will make her happy, of course, until she finds something better. The reason she needs that expensive sink and not a cheaper one is a self-confident point that was enforced by social surrounding.
In this article, the author is trying to say that people depend on society. They care about such things as social status and class, and they are getting more obsessed with things through the years. “…why we keep consuming, It’s hard-wired into us” (Wente 343). Margaret Wente is also saying that things that people desire will make them happy as long as they find something more significant and if they cannot fulfill their wishes, it can even lead to stress because it might lower their self-sense and make them feel that their social status it lower than the others.
…show more content…
“Our unending lust for stuff is also known as the "upscaling of lifestyle norms” (Wente 342). This “lust” is not going to disappear; people will always want more than they already have. People are becoming greedy and it is becoming normal because the society makes us feel that certain way. People could live a free and happy life but “The happiness experts…claim that probably you're no happier than your grandparents were. Just the opposite” (Wente 343). The social norms are changing and people need to follow them to be

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    It is a question of quality vs. quantity. Does the consumption of as many things as possible lead us to that happiness we all so desperately desire? And as technology develops and production becomes more efficient, does that mean we now have more free time to relax and enjoy life? Two views are suggested in this article; the first being ours, to never be satisfied with what you have and always strive for more, the second is called the Buddhist view, to be at peace with what is and learn to be satisfied with less.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After reading, “ Why Money doesn’t buy happiness,” of Sharon Begley, I have read another essay similar to this one in high school before. This question has been asked for years, everyone has different answers for it, “Does money buy happiness?”- By the author, the economy where people try to get as much as for what they sell as they can, when where people try to pay as little as they can for things they want to buy, the more they can earn/save money, the more contentment they have. The main purpose of this essay is to convince people that not the more money you have, the happier you must be, there are a lot of unhappy rich folks out there are depressed and suicide everyday, but it does give you more choices, which mean money bring you more…

    • 301 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    We are living in a material world." This famous line in one of Madonna's songs entitled "Material Girl" will never outgrow itself. Ever since the beginnings of monetary means, the main focus of living is getting more money and to be as successful as possible. This became a huge issue during the 1920's. In this era, people made money from the stock market, illegal bootlegging and so forth. With these people hitting the jackpot, this then created a new rank called `new money'. This rank, however, never overpowered `old money' the most wealthiest, well-known and respected class. The possession of material wealth however, can't bring true happiness. Love is an important factor in this equation; when you don't have love, it is hard to say that you are happy. Daisy Buchanan's case in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald proves this to its entirety. When having to decide between an empty marriage with her husband Tom and Jay Gatsby, her love interest, she chooses Tom even though he doesn't make her truly happy. It is then evident all throughout the novel that materialistic properties of wealth and status triumphs over love.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    First, Americans are becoming over materialistic because of competition. Source number five, “The New Consumerism”, an essay written by Juliet Schor, explains the concept of competition between Americans, which leads to dangerous effects. In the essay, Schor explains how the American neighborhood led to competition in the middle of the twentieth century. Schor states, “In the 1950’s and 60’s, when Americans were keeping up with the Jones down the street, they typically compared themselves to other households of similar incomes” (Schor ¶ 3). This explains competition because even though each family has similar incomes, the competition to have the same possessions may develop in the neighborhood, even if they don’t need it.…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the main arguments in this book is that money only equals happiness up to a certain financial point, in other words, even when growth makes us wealthier, it doesn’t make us happier. Actually, the level of ‘happiness’, as measured by a major survey taker, peaked in the United States in the mid-1950s, and has been on a steady decline ever since, even while the amount of material possessions, hours worked, house square footage, and cars driven has…

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anna Quindlen, a novelist, social critic, and journalist wrote an intriguing essay “Stuff is Not Salvation” about the addiction of Americans, who splurge on materialistic items that have no real meaning. The ability to obtain credit is one of the main reasons to blame for society’s consumption epidemic. However, Quindlen feels the economic decline due to credit card debt is insignificant compared to the underlying issues of American’s binging problems. Quindlen’s essay gives excellent points regarding the differences in America’s typical shopping habits. Additionally, she mentions how people acquire all this “stuff” but seem to never realize, “why did I get this?”(501). Quindlen makes her audience visualize a world where we acquire our needs versus our meaningless desires. Yet, she fails to mention people who could live a life of happiness through the possessions they acquire.…

    • 880 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stress is an unavoidable cause of living in the real world. It can cause several health complications or can help you get out of a dangerous situation in a pinch, but how much stress is too much? In “The Most Stressed Out Generation? Young Adults”, Alexandra Sifferlin sees stress as a problem that troubles young adults everywhere. Sifferlin ties in the research and evidence to back up her point. Her clear and enlightening tone allowed me to grasp each and every word in the article. Furthermore, reading each paragraph lets the reader find out something new about how Americans rate and handles their stress.…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pack Rat's Today: Hoarding

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages

    There are two important decisions we have to make: what do I keep and what do I throw out? Schutza tells how the inability to throw out, due to the emotional attachment, is extremely hard for hoarders (Schutza 254). Dr. Randy O. Frost and his colleague RC Gross supports her as he defines hoarding as the acquisition of and failure to discard large numbers of possessions, which appear to be useless or of limited value (Frost & Gross 367-381). While hoarding is widely frowned upon, everyone, whether consciously or not, partakes of hoarding habits. Asking the question “Do we really need everything we buy and save?” she implies that we have enough, if not too much, when she explains how there was one time when only the wealthy used to be able to afford materialistic nonessentials but now that food and material are sufficient; we have just developed problems of greed (Schutza 256). Frost, Steketee, and Williams defined compulsive buying as chronic, repetitive purchasing behavior, in response to negative events and/or feelings, that is difficult to stop and…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Today’s society teaches people to be happy but in that, they focus on the material items to make them happy. Many people in the world define happiness as living a good life or exceeding the expectations of others. But happiness begins with finding what is within, what is one’s true desires in life. People focus more on the price of life than life itself, and they tend to make happiness out of material objects and then not being happy in the end.…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paradox of Affluence

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The term "paradox of affluence" explains the disparity that has developed over the last 40 to 50 years in America between material well-being and psychosocial well-being. "The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short." It also provides extensive statistical evidence that indices of material affluence and of well-being have gone in opposite directions since the 1950s. We measure affluence in dollars or by other crude material measures. A person with more is more affluent. The affluence of a country is expressed as its gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in and by a nation. It has long been observed, though, that GDP fails to measure what truly counts for human well being. A million dollars spent on prisons and toxic waste clean-up counts as much toward GDP as a million spent on education, food, or art. Measurement of happiness may be even more complex. Some have argued that we can’t trust people to rate their own happiness—that people do in fact get happier as they get richer. When it comes to happiness and wealth Maslow insists that the urge for self-actualization is deeply entrenched in the human psyche, but only surfaces once the more basic needs are fulfilled. Once the powerful needs for food, security, love and self-esteem are satisfied, a deep desire for creative expression and self-actualization rises to the surface. Through his "hierarchy of needs," Maslow succeeds in combining the insights of earlier psychologists such as Freud and Skinner, who focus on the more basic human instincts, and the more upbeat work of Jung and Fromm, who insist that the desire for happiness is equally worthy of attention.Still we must not equate wealth with value. There are things we truly value—time with family and friends, connection to community, the satisfaction of helping others, the challenge of meaningful work.…

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Thesis statement: Society’s traditional achievement of satisfaction is rendered impossible when a consumerist society propagandizes wealth’s essential role in finding happiness.…

    • 127 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Having the complicated substances sorted in life. Can you actually buy ‘Happiness’?. It is like owning an empty mansion living alone, this wouldn’t actually fabricate you to be ‘Happy’. Another example, moreover the article is being a basketball wife, in term may result in an exceptional amount of money, but also that you wouldn’t spend as much time together because the ‘husband’ is going to be fixed on the sport rather than the…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wifi Persuasive Speech

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Thesis: For one to live a happy life they need to live without certain items, as they cause them to not achieve happiness due to the distractions from these items and receive an overload of information, thus causing stress.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being happy with what you have is not a bad thing. The rub comes in when, as an adult, we either fool ourselves into believing a lie in such a case as to hold us back from greater good. We can also get into the keeping up with the Jones type lifestyles where we can not be happy with what we have and continually strive for the status symbols of society. Perfect example is a guy I worked with. Gary would make statements like “I only have the best!” This was and still is the most ridiculous thing that could be said. You see, I knew what the man made a year. I couldn’t afford the best and he was farther in debt than I was. Now, with the scene set, I was able to find a deal on a Chevrolet Suburban. It was nice, ¾ ton, 4 wheel drive, big block v8, and red. At the time Gary was driving a Lexus. After I drove the suburban to work the Lexus had to go. It was not a week till he was rolling in with a black Tahoe. What was his need? By his own admission he couldn’t justify the purchase to his wife. Well, Gary has the best and a major loan to go along with it. This is a spiraling decent into debt that eventually will lead to a lot being taken away. Hindering our thinking can be monumentally dangerous from the point of living beyond our…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first basic level of needs is biological and physiological needs. Maslow believes that things like “air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex and sleep” (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) are things that fit in this level of needs. Maslow believed that in order to fulfill this basic level than you can then fulfill all the other levels of need. Today some people try to fulfill the fourth level of need instead of trying to fulfill their basic needs. The fourth level of needs according to Maslow is esteem needs. Esteem needs consists of “achievement, mastery, status, self-respect, self-respect from others” (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) and so forth. This is where happiness comes into play, people feel like in order to be “happy” they must have to feel like they achieved something. Conspicuous consumption is a great way to show others their status in life. By constantly buying the latest things they are showing off that they are financially stable and living a lavish life which other people cannot afford to do so. People who believe in this way of life are going against Maslow’s idea because by spending so much money on materialistic things one might not have enough money to pay their rent, or bring food to the table. By focusing on their status…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays