Money can buy happiness is true in the sense of fulfilling a requirement for obtaining the need(s) to experience a happy outgoing life. A person may need an operation to improve their own health and afterwards would be able to seek happiness as the current moment is dread by the variables of requiring the procedure. Further, the person can only obtain the course of action needed with a sum of finances they lack. Another person may fit the same scenario but have the finances and can place themselves on the path of happiness sooner which may be better than later. I see this in the transgender community a lot. People debate it all the time because of discomfort towards the idea that finances are a factor in obtaining vs not in having a happy life.
Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#32I don't think anyone contests the fact that money increases happiness _up to a point_. Once you have full financial security though, it becomes quite nonlinear. Outside of bonkers areas, 1 million NW gets you retirement. 10 million NW gets you that plus... toys. It's a major reason why taxation should focus on the rich (as opposed to the 'well off' e.g. high incomes). They really will not notice it aside from ideolog…
Taxes already do focus on the wealthy with progressive taxes (in many countries), though. From an American perspective, the top federal income tax bracket is 37%. The top state income tax rate can be anywhere from 0% to 12.3% (California), so in total you can pay up to 49.3% of a potion of your income in taxes. In America, the top 1% paid 45.7% of total income tax in 2015 [1] (earning 17% of "expanded cash income"),…
The top 1% of income earners, perhaps, but not the top 1% of wealth, which largely pays only a 15% long-term capital gains tax.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#33I think it's a well-established fact that going from poor to middle class makes a huge difference, from middle to top makes difference too, but not as big. 5 years ago I was a carpenter in New York making some 30k a year, I was miserable. I wanted a different job, but not only because of a better paycheck, but also a kind of work I'd do, the way I'd spend my days. Now I'm a web developer and having that background re…
This is a great argument against working unpaid overtime. Unpaid overtime work holds M constant while reducing T - recomputing your M and T cause M to reduce at a rate of 2.5% per hour worked past 40. And your Q might reduce as well.
What if the model were changed to
M + T*Q = H
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taxes already do focus on the wealthy with progressive taxes (in many countries), though. The tax system provides tons of ways the wealthy can skip taxes, progressive or not.
This is why I truly believe in a consumption/sales tax instead of income tax (aka FairTax). You can build as much wealth as you'd like, but it doesn't do you any good until you spend it. At that point there is no avoiding the tax and it's much easier for the IRS to track. Even if a black market developed, at some point that money flows back into the economy and is taxed whereas today it does not (aka tax havens and m…
This is even easier to tax dodge because you just pay cash and do stuff off the books.
Regressive taxation schemes don’t take into account the disproportionate advantages that the wealthy get from having sound infrastructure provided by the government.
How does a sales tax properly impact the monopolist who is getting advantages from state sponsored research and educational subsidies?
They also don’t take into account that the wealthy can pay more in taxes without it substantially affecting their quality of life, whereas a poor person it will make a huge difference in their diet and ability to save.
It may be logical on a simple level, but logical at face value doesn’t make it sound public policy.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxes already do focus on the wealthy with progressive taxes (in many countries), though. From an American perspective, the top federal income tax bracket is 37%. The top state income tax rate can be anywhere from 0% to 12.3% (California), so in total you can pay up to 49.3% of a potion of your income in taxes. In America, the top 1% paid 45.7% of total income tax in 2015 [1] (earning 17% of "expanded cash income"),…
This makes it sound like double is a big proportion. But given how much of the wealth the rich control, I'd expect it to be closer to 80 or 90% of tax coming from the rich. They just don't need it.
That seems like it would decentivize being rich pretty dramatically. The truth is that many rich people are the main movers of the economy, generating positive value for everyone (versus rent seeking). If you decentivize being rich you decentivize generating value.
Ayn Rand explores a world where the rich value creators go on strike when people and the government “loot” and plumber their wealth, through regulations and restrictions in her economic dystopian book Atlas Shrugged.
I mention this merely to suggest we could be careful about overtaxation ‘because they’re rich and won’t miss it.’ We ought to discuss the boundary where we go too far and steer very clear of that boundary.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you speaking from personal experience or is this just what you've heard elsewhere? I've still not reached the point where more money hasn't increased my happiness, however I'm definitely making far more than an above-average wage in London. I think a great number of people could be happier with more money assuming they have good ideas on how they can spend their money to improve their lives.
From personal experience. The step change for me was financial independence. It's not about income, but wealth. A basic example - the difference between a 50K a year job and a 200K a year job is enormous if you have no wealth. If you are FI, then other factors like the nature of the work, the hours, the location and so on are far more important. Because once you're there, it becomes clear that money has far less valu…
Money is a tool to buy time. More money makes that time more fun, but I agree, the best use of money is to buy time.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree completely. I think much joy can be found in new experiences, though, which money certainly enables.
Very few meaningful experiences require significant amount of money.
Again, I agree in principle. But to give a concrete example, my girlfriend and I recently missed a leg of a flight while en route to Europe. Totally our fault. If I didn't have a comfortable amount in savings this would have been a disaster. Instead, within a few minutes, we had accommodations in our layover country and a train booked to our final destination (all at fairly exorbitant prices compared to if we had booked in advance). But maybe this is just an example of alleviating financial anxiety versus enabling meaningful experience.
Also, "significant amount of money" is terribly subjective. I know people to whom $100 is a significant amount of money.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#38I think it truly depends on the person. Give me $10 million and I will be very happy for the rest of my life as I indulge every hobby I’ve ever wanted, and build concrete security for myself and my family. I think it truly depends on the person. Give me $10 million and I will be very happy for the rest of my life as I indulge every hubby I’ve ever wanted, and build concrete security for myself and my family. The phil…
One of my biggest nightmares is that money might bring out the worst in people whether myself, my family, or my friends so if I was lucky enough to get $10M, it would ruin my life by destroying everything that I love.
Sort of like the data behind the misfortunes of lottery winners.
http://amp.timeinc.net/time/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lotter...
In my limited experience, money makes it harder to have good relationships.
“I just don’t like Jack Whittaker. I don’t like the hard heart I’ve got,” he said. “I don’t like what I’ve become.”
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#39I don't think anyone contests the fact that money increases happiness _up to a point_. Once you have full financial security though, it becomes quite nonlinear. Outside of bonkers areas, 1 million NW gets you retirement. 10 million NW gets you that plus... toys. It's a major reason why taxation should focus on the rich (as opposed to the 'well off' e.g. high incomes). They really will not notice it aside from ideolog…
Taxes already do focus on the wealthy with progressive taxes (in many countries), though. From an American perspective, the top federal income tax bracket is 37%. The top state income tax rate can be anywhere from 0% to 12.3% (California), so in total you can pay up to 49.3% of a potion of your income in taxes. In America, the top 1% paid 45.7% of total income tax in 2015 [1] (earning 17% of "expanded cash income"),…
Progressive taxes focus on income, not on wealth.
Very few people get wealthy from income (in part because it's taxed so heavily). Usually, wealth comes from capital growth.
Wealth taxes focus on wealth. Unfortunately, it's very hard to reliably tax wealth because making wealth tax efficient is highly incentivized at every level: not just offshore vehicles, tax exiles etc., but also governments trying to encourage investment effectively subsidize wealthy people increasing their wealth.
Re: Money can buy happiness, but not unconditionally
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taxes already do focus on the wealthy with progressive taxes (in many countries), though. The tax system provides tons of ways the wealthy can skip taxes, progressive or not.
This is why I truly believe in a consumption/sales tax instead of income tax (aka FairTax). You can build as much wealth as you'd like, but it doesn't do you any good until you spend it. At that point there is no avoiding the tax and it's much easier for the IRS to track. Even if a black market developed, at some point that money flows back into the economy and is taxed whereas today it does not (aka tax havens and m…
Wealthy people don't consume in the way you understand consumption. Wealth, at the higher levels, is almost synonymous with power. It's what amplifies your agency. By owning large organizations, investing in new developments, starting new organizations, controlling organizational output (think media companies in particular), wealth is converted into control over people and to a certain extent, governments.
Wealth gets "consumed" by bad investments. Those "bad" investments might even be considered as expenditure, almost as consumption, by the wealthy, e.g. subsidizing a newspaper - but what does sales tax (or some other consumption tax) look like when it's applied to journalists' salaries? Doesn't really make sense, does it.