Chris Haroun, a former Goldman Sachs banker, argues that Wall Street's constant wealth comparison destroys happiness. He describes bonus season leaving employees depressed when peers earned more, and references the Dalai Lama's observation that Western culture trades health and life quality for money, then spends it trying to regain what was lost.
How many yachts can you water ski behind?
How much is enough? It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses.
This is realistic. A lot of these hedge fund billionaires, they can never make enough money. And a lot of them aren't that happy because they compare themselves to those that work in the hedge fund industry that have more. And the cancer of Wall street in Western society is comparing yourself to those that make more. When I worked at Goldman Sachs, remember, every bonus season in December, we would all be depressed, myself included. To be intellectually honest and transparent, as always, we wouldn't be that happy because we would look at other people that make more money. The only time you should look at somebody else's bowl is to see if they have enough as you do and not more. I love this book by the Dalai Lama you got to read called the Art of Happiness. And he said, the problem with Western society is we sacrifice our health, our entire lives in order to make money. And at the end of our lives, we sacrifice all of our money to maintain our health. And then we look back, we realize we never really lived to begin with.
