my favorite line is from Wreckless Eric:

when I was a young boy
my mother said to me
there's only girl in the world for you
she probably lives in Tahiti

But, this talk about pretty women not being good partners is bullshit.

Yeah, one of the technical terms for it is relative deprivation...  I think it has an upside in that at least you have some ambition...  I have never had any ambition, and consequently women have walked all over me my entire life...

I agree with the fact that it is not relevant, but not true? I don't know about that. I am all for keeping it real. BTW, same goes for guys, all you ladies out there beware really good looking guys, you are only asking for trouble. Again good looking is a very relative term and as Kenny Rogers says "There's someone for everyone and Tommy's girl was Becky."

This is the real lesson, but it's one that doesn't get learned for decades. We and our kids were raised in opulent times. What you owned defined you. If owned less, you might feel ashamed.

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.

From my personal point of view, get another girl to marry you. 

 I know it's not PC, but the lyric is "get an ugly girl to marry you".

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.

From my personal point of view, get another girl to marry you. 

Do what you love. Do what makes you happy, what enriches your life and makes you feel productive. Find a way to make that meet your material needs - even if it means a lower standard of living than you might lust for - and you'll be happy. 

You can get by on very little money, it just takes eschewing most of the things that we like to do in society. 

   to all (most) of that.

Even with capitalism, at some point we have to come to terms with this societal issue.

And also tangential but related... the tremendous sucking of wealth out of the middle and into the top.  Even if a person defends the capitalist right to make as much profit as he pleases regardless of the cost to society... there is a point where the math just doesn't work, and the economy can't continue to support it.

And an encouraging observation:  The arts are staying alive in the young generation, because a lot of youth are content with pretty non-materialistic and bohemian kind of lifestyle.  (this reported from my 26yr old who is thoroughly examining these issues right now).  There seems to be a pretty solid anti-capitalism demographic.  The biggest obstacle to this model will be health care, especially as this group ages.    You can be happy in inexpensive living conditions... but if you get a tumor on your ovary, you can't just ask your friends for a little help.

I'll disagree here, but only on the execution side. Again it needs to come to a societal acceptance of standards and value. When we forgive debt, some real person looses somewhere. Whether it be an individual investor, a group of shareholders, a bunch of bank employees, or taxpayers, when debt is forgiven, people loose without having much say in the decision. I'd rather see us establish a system where the things we value intrinsically, like teaching and public service, and maybe arts simply cost less to start with. That way everyone is clear up front: This job pays less because there is less risk with it. You don't have to incur as much debt, but your chances of big payoffs later are a lot smaller.  

The problem is how do we as a society set the values? We have to have a common standard that we all roughly agree upon to say a teacher is worth X% more to our society than a ditch digger. In a way we already have this: money. Jobs have fairly general wages associated with them and people pick and choose if it's worth it to pursue those careers.  We've had some skewing in the last 10-15 year with the advance of private "universities" that are essentially selling the opportunities that they have manufactured. But if we take a step back from that, we already have much of the framework in place. Society already speaks to what it values. Lots of professional jobs let you do quite well, but never really get rich. A handful of artists and entrepreneurs get fabulously rich, but the majority just get by and often work in other fields for subsistence. If you want guaranteed wealth, you need to be born to a rich family. If you want guaranteed happiness, then your just out of luck. You can get by on very little money, it just takes eschewing most of the things that we like to do in society. That's the trade off that our society has picked.

 

The problem is that we have tied the concepts of worth, value, money and profit all together. We also have a basic problem of need: we need to get some things done, so everyone can't follow their bliss and still expect to eat steak. I think this leads to the crux of the issue: what is a minimum standard of living that we all agree is acceptable, and what should we as a society expect back from that to make supporting that minimum a good value (not profit, but make it worth us supporting).  This is tangential but related to the healthcare debate and probably worthy of it's own discussion thread.