It's a good idea to ask yourself what your goal is. Do you actually want to make a billion dollars? At what expense? Some things correlate much better with happiness than cash.
I think Thoreau said it best: "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
Making a billion dollars, and holding on to it are separate things. If you feel that being a billionaire will make you 'uncool,' then why not just donate a large portion of it to some charity. What could be 'cooler' than making $1B and then turning around to donate $900M to charity?
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It's a good idea to ask yourself what your goal is. Do you actually want to make a billion dollars? At what expense? Some things correlate much better with happiness than cash.
I think Thoreau said it best: "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
For a detailed, pragmatic exegesis of this insight, see Your Money Or Your Life by Joe Dominguez.
Money has made more happiness than has poverty.
Sure, but "have enough money to avoid poverty" is a much different goal than "make a billion dollars".
Yes. Once you reach a certain level of income the increase in happiness levels off. (Around 60k in the US apparently.)
Wanting to make a billion dollars leads to this sort of silliness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aRor905cCw
[citation needed]
Making a billion dollars, and holding on to it are separate things. If you feel that being a billionaire will make you 'uncool,' then why not just donate a large portion of it to some charity. What could be 'cooler' than making $1B and then turning around to donate $900M to charity?