Path Toward Happiness - How Many Tatami Mats Do You Need? 足るを知る

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

In Japan, an inheritance battle over a famous popular music singer and composer Masaaki Hirao's $50 million estate is going on. His youngest son has filed a lawsuit against his stepmother, who worked for the composer for about 20 years, to prevent her from receiving all copyright fees of annually about $1 million for Mr. Hirao's work for the next 50 years.

Wow! If there is no will, his wife will get $500,000 and his three sons $170,000 each year. These are enough amounts to have a pretty good life, aren't they? But some inherit more money, like $300 million or more, and this got me to think about if it's right to inherit such a huge amount of money.

When asking a friend of mine this, he said, "We should consider money as food." He said that it's okay to "store" money, but storing too much and letting it "go bad" isn't good. A reasonable amount of money may vary between people, but isn't $3 million to $5 million enough? Having more money to use it for some good cause is okay, but just hoarding money is bad, said he.

I've never thought about money like this, but can't agree more. I believe that the more you work, the more you should be rewarded. I want to be fairly rewarded for what I do. Capitalisｍ. But how about having too much to spend, especially when the money isn't originally yours? Besides, a research's result (only in Japanese) says that annual income and the degree of happiness grow proportionately to the extent of income of $95,000, but after that, people feel less happy.

If so, why don't we limit the amount of money we can inherit to, say, $3 million? With this amount, a person can live without working for 30 years or more. Isn't it enough? If giving too much money make the recipient less happy, we shouldn't give it. In addition, this may make happier those who really need money, like children who want to have higher education, but can't afford it.   

There is a saying in Japan that "we only need a half tatami mat to stand and one mat to sleep." It tells us the importance of knowing contentment, i.e., a way to be happy. Is it too much to ask people to learn it?

平尾昌晃氏の遺産争いがニュースになっています。年間1億円の著作権料ということなので、普通に考えたら奥さんに5千万円、息子さんたちにはそれぞれ1,700万円ほどがこれから50年間働かくなくても入ってくるわけです。でも世の中にはもっとたくさん、例えば3億円とか相続している方がいらっしゃるそう。そこで思いました。そんなにたくさんのお金を相続していいの？

友人にこの疑問をぶつけてみたら、「金は食い物と一緒。腐るほどため込んではダメでしょ」とのこと。彼曰く、せいぜい3億円から5億円あればもう十分。何かの目的のために使うならいいけど貯め込むのはダメ、と言われてしまいました。

お金を食べ物と同じと考えたことはなかったけど、大賛成。もちろん働けばその分だけ見返りがあるべきだとは思います。資本主義ですから。でも使いきれないほどお金がある、そしてそれがもともと自分のお金ではないというのはいかがなものか。それにある調査によると、人間、年収1,000万円ぐらいまでは収入の額と幸福度が比例するけど、それ以上は逆に不幸になるんですって。

だったら相続に限度額を設けたらどうでしょう。例えば3億円くらい。それだけあれば何もせずに30年は生きられるから十分でしょ。そして余ったお金は本当に必要としている人、例えば教育の無償化に使えばいいのでは。

起きて半畳寝て一畳。お金持ちすぎの方に是非学んでいただきたいことです。