I want to try and introduce a different viewpoint here, just to mix things up a little bit.
First, I'm not going to argue that being rich is bad, as this wouldn't really make any sense. However, what I will try to argue is that having a lack of money some of the time is a good thing.
Let me give you an example. Let's say you grew up in a family in which you received a large inheritance of several billions of dollars. In addition, you will continue to receive huge sums of money throughout your life (just in case you run out). If you lived this kind of life, would you have any appreciation of money at all? Of course not! In fact, you wouldn't be thinking about money whatsoever (why would you, if you didn't have to?). In this case, the abundance of money neither adds nor subtracts from your overall happiness.
Now let's say you were born into a poor family where food, clothes, and money were all scarce. Your family when you were a child was constantly concerned about when the next paycheck would arrive, simply so that they could provide you with what you need to live. Now, in this case, money can actually bring you happiness. You'll work hard in your life to make sure that you'll have money, and in turn, this new abundance of money will actually bring you happiness.
Comparing these two cases, we see that money provides positive utility for only the person in the latter scenario. You can only learn to appreciate (and, thus, derive happiness from) money only if you've had a lack of it in the past. Therefore, we should not look upon being poor as something "bad" (just as we shouldn't look at being rich as something bad). It is merely one step in the process of adding to our future "happiness potential".  |