Billionaire Charlie Munger thinks we should all be happier.
Munger, a longtime investment partner and friend of billionaire Warren Buffett, says he doesn’t understand why people today are so dissatisfied with what they have, especially compared to more difficult times in history.
“People are not happy with the situation,” Munger said earlier this year at the annual meeting of the Daily Journal newspaper company, where he is a director.
The 98-year-old He said he came of age in the 1930s, when Americans everywhere were struggling, “it’s strange for someone my age, because I was in great depression when the problem was unbelievable.”
At that annual meeting, Munger complained that he was the envy of many people today. Before the early 1800s, “Life is so cruel, short, limited and what have you. [There was] No printing press, no air conditioning, no modern medicine,” he said.
If nothing else, Munger’s widespread envy in today’s world may be right on the money: recent studies show that approximately 75% of people are jealous of someone else in any given year.
Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are particularly effective at inducing feelings of envy or jealousy, often associating us with people who pursue positive developments in their lives to a greater degree.
At the meeting, Munger pointed to the work of Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who argued that the quality of life around the world has improved dramatically over the past century or two, citing evidence such as longer life spans and a reduction in global poverty.
Critics of Pinker’s work argue that his views are overly simplistic and ignorant of the negative aspects of modern life, from wealth inequality to ongoing violence and political instability—factors that can still cause real pain.
In the year In 2019, Munger downplayed the effects of wealth and income inequality and said that “politicians who shout about it are idiots.”
Some politicians, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have called for tax increases on the super-rich in recent years. Munger and his estimated net worth of $2.2 billion may be subject to those increases.
The billionaire expressed doubts about the high taxes imposed on the rich last year, even though some equality is an important aspect of a free market economy. At this year’s Daily Journal annual meeting, he added that most people were concerned about wealth inequality and that criticism of the super-rich was “motivated by envy.”
“I can’t change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and very offended after everything has improved by about 600%, because there’s still someone else who has more,” Munger said.
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Don’t miss it. Billionaire investor Charlie Munger: ‘The world is run not by greed but by envy’
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