Person's pursuit for happiness in modern world is tightly connected with the idea of owning and consuming. It is believed that delusion that genuine happiness can be found this way. According to the 1999 UNHDR, the percentage of Americans who considered themselves happy peaked in 1957, despite the fact that consumption per person has more than doubled since then. At the same time, studies of U.S. households have found that between 1986 and 1994 the amount of money people think they need to live happily has doubled! That seems paradoxical, but it is not difficult to explain: when we define ourselves as consumers, we can never have enough. For reasons we never quite understand, consumerism never really gives us what we want from it; it works by keeping us thinking that the next thing we buy will satisfy us.

Higher incomes have certainly enabled many people to become more generous, but this has not been their main effect, because capitalism is based upon a very different principle: that capital should be used to create more capital. Rather than redistributing our wealth, we prefer to invest that wealth as a means to accumulate more and spend more, regardless of whether or not we need more. In fact, the question of whether or not we really need more has become rather quaint; you can never be too rich.

From the other hand, poverty is a source of unhappiness in itself and also makes it more difficult to grow spiritually and intellectually. Who would pay for Internet and electricity? So, some wealth IS needed for a person to be happy not to borrow, mounting debts and ever-increasing suffering.

But the truth is in the middle. Not growing consumerism or poverty makes a person unhappy. That's why I would like to quote Dalai Lama: "I was thinking for whole my life: what is necessary for happiness? And came up with the conclusion: nothing can be done without freedom. Everything else is secondary, even faith..."