'Stop complaining, stop being envious of others, be happy with what you have'

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‘Stop complaining, stop being envious of others, be happy with what you have’ — Charlie Munger

Screenshot 2023-01-01 at 18-21-30 Charlie Munger — Photo: Flickr screengrab/Nick Webb

January 2, 2023

He said he doesn’t get why people today aren’t happier with what they have, especially if one looks back at history.

Investment billionaire Charlie Munger has something to say to the world. Stop complaining!

Munger is a long-time friend and investment partner of billionaire Warren Buffett. Munger said he doesn’t get why people today aren’t happier with what they have, especially if one looks back at history. “People are less happy about the state of affairs than what they were when things were way tougher,” said Munger in an interview with the Daily Journal earlier this year.

Charlie Munger and struggling

Charlie Munger, who is 98 said he grew up in the 1930s when Americans were really struggling. “It’s weird for somebody my age, because I was in the middle of the Great Depression when the hardship was unbelievable.”

Before the early 1800s, there were thousands of years when “life was pretty brutal, short, limited and what have you [There was] no printing press, no air conditioning, no modern medicine,” he said.

Munger just may be right, as research shows that roughly 75% of people are envious of someone else in any given year. Much of this envy is set off by social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Unfortunately, people don’t realise that that content is highly curated only to show the positive in their lives.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has put forth that the quality of life around the world has dramatically improved over the past century or two, citing evidence such as longer life expectancies and reduced global poverty.

However, many fail to see the downside of this study, which concerns wealth inequality. Munger himself downplayed the effects of this in 2019, stating that politicians who were “screaming about it are idiots.”

High Taxes

The billionaire is also not in favour of the proposal by some politicians to impose high taxes on the ultra-wealthy (he undoubtedly would be one of them).

His argument? That inequality is a necessary aspect of a free market economy. He also added that people’s criticisms of the ultra-wealthy were often the result of envy.

“I can’t change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and feel very abused after everything’s improved by about 600% because there’s still somebody else who has more,” said Charlie Munger.