Will money make us truly rich?
Every day I read or watch something intended to scare the
common public into thinking the worst, if you go onto any news website you will
constantly read articles about things like the fluctuation in property
prices. The articles assume it’s all
doom and gloom if prices drop and you will be worse off because your assets
will decrease in value, the reality is that the property market is like any
other market, and it fluctuates over time. It really makes me sad to see how we view
money as a nation and the link we make with it improving our lives.
I don’t have a problem with people becoming wealthy but a
common challenge I put to people is to measure wealth in terms of happiness,
after all happiness is one of the main reasons we want to be wealthy - isn’t
it? This poses an important point which
our country’s “leaders” should be at least acknowledging, do people really want
to be wealthy or do they want more basic things like happiness and security?
There are people in the world that would be viewed as poor
though they can feed their family and have a roof over their head and that is
all they need, they are happy and secure.
In the 1980’s the King of Bhutan decreed that his governance can only be
measured by how happy the people become, Gross National Happiness is still used
today as a key indicator of performance.
A stark similarity to the name most countries including Australia use to
measure performance - Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is the total value of products and
services we create in our economy, yes a value placed purely on money. I’ve never been to Bhutan but I’m sure they
live a happy and enriched life due to their government’s policies.
Meanwhile back in Australia families are working themselves
to the bone because they bought the “perfect house” and need to keep up with
the mortgage payments, unfortunately “mortgage stress” is now a common term in the
world we live in.
Who can blame these people with society telling them their
wealth is a measure of their happiness?
It’s even evident at the top, in our national anthem there is the line
“we’ve golden soil and wealth for toil”, I’m sure the government used that as
an argument for the mining tax. Our own
government see our land as a mattress with untold riches hidden beneath and the
sea as hidden treasures of prosperity enriched by natural gas and oil. I’m pretty sure the national anthem hints on
something a bit more then what can be dug up; I interpret it to mean that
wealth is measured in what is around us.
The country’s wealth is the magnificent land we inhabit, the
easy going Aussie personality and the fact that most of us have come from
elsewhere in the world and made a truly great place for generations to improve
on. Most people have simplistic wants, they
value seeing their family grow, being happy and having fond memories, this is
their true wealth.
If we had a true understanding of our wants and needs and
applied this to how we look at finance individually and as a society then our
nation would be the richer for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment