Now chart the medication of psychotropic drugs in those countries.
Money can buy happiness
21–30 of 172 posts
Re: Money can buy happiness
#22I'm curious what the result show if you did not have to work for your money? While money does not make you happier when you work for it I wonder what portion of that is due to the additional stress, long hours, and responsibility that comes with high income jobs.
Re: Money can buy happiness
#23The richest in India are less happy than Brazil's poorest. But leave it to the economist to find that money makes you happy while ignoring that some countries seem much happier. If you were to pick a country where you could randomly end up anywhere on the income scale, which would you pick? Of the countries listed, I'd pick the United States, followed by Brazil, Britain and Mexico.
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Re: Money can buy happiness
#24I may sound like a conspiracy theorist but oh well: The cynic in me says such graphs are (figuratively) propaganda by the 1% (of 1% in wealth, not income), in that now we can define what the masses are "ok" with while we, the 1% of the 1%, can accelerate our gains further. Let the rest of them have crumbs and be content.
The cynic in me is actually thinking it's interesting that the Scandanavian countries are left off the charts. They are usually touted as being amongst the happiest countries in the world, despite rather aggressive tax regimes to pay for it. Perhaps there is some cherry picking going on here? Either as propaganda to show that the US is the happiest, or to show that money equals happiness - which might not be true in the more socialist, high tax/lower net income Scandinavian countries.
I'm probably being too cynical though. It's just surprising given the reputation of countries like Denmark and Norway for being happy, that any study could possibly leave them out.
Re: Money can buy happiness
#25In regards to subjective happiness and income, I like to pose the question: Would you rather earn $80,000 and live in a neighbourhood of those earning $100,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 and live in a neighbourhood of those earning $80,000. Money and happiness is entirely subjective according to your environment.
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Re: Money can buy happiness
#26The income scale is logarithmic, so the apparently linear lines that you see are actually curved. The returns in happiness per $ earned fall off significantly towards the top of the scale (which incidentally is capped at a fairly low $128,000). I don't really see how this new data contradicts the generally accepted view (mentioned in the article) that money increases happiness up to a point.
>I don't really see how this new data contradicts the generally accepted view (mentioned in the article) that money increases happiness up to a point.
The article shows a logarithmic trend (i.e. doubling your income increases your happiness by a fixed amount), which is a straight line on the log plot. This insinuates (if the trend continues, which is assumed from the results) that there is no point at which increased income won't make someone happier.
The traditionally-held view is that there is an income (I've heard something like 70k in the USA) where the plot should become a horizontal line, i.e. increasing your income increases your happiness by zero.
These are very different conclusions. The plot isn't really falling "significantly towards the top of the scale". Log is the correct way of looking at income, because people consider changes to their income proportionately to their current income (for example, a 5% raise to someone making 1M dollars a year is about as significant to his life as a 5% raise for someone making 100k, even though the actual additive amounts are very different).
Re: Money can buy happiness
#27satisfaction != happiness
Re: Money can buy happiness
#28The participants were not asked how happy they were, they were asked where they stood on a 'satisfaction ladder' with the best life they could imagine at the top. Many people may be perfectly happy, but they know their position on the wealth scale and imagine that they would feel more satisfied at the top of that scale.
Re: Money can buy happiness
#29This seems obvious. Having no money is very stressful. Stress not only makes you generally very unhappy - it actually damages your brain ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15511597 ). Stress is an unhealthy thing to experience, especially when it is constant and your mind and body do not have time to recover. In small doses, a little stress keeps you moving, but its benefits drop off pretty quickly the more stress…
Depends on where/how you live and how much "value" you place on money. I think one could also argue that money causes stress depending on how much you have and how you got/maintain it.
Here's what I think:
- If you're born into money, money = happiness if you follow & believe in what the family wants you to do.
- If you started a business that made you money, money = happiness more than half the time
- If you got huge amounts of money suddenly, money = problems.
Re: Money can buy happiness
#30I may sound like a conspiracy theorist but oh well: The cynic in me says such graphs are (figuratively) propaganda by the 1% (of 1% in wealth, not income), in that now we can define what the masses are "ok" with while we, the 1% of the 1%, can accelerate our gains further. Let the rest of them have crumbs and be content.
The cynic in me is actually thinking it's interesting that the Scandanavian countries are left off the charts. They are usually touted as being amongst the happiest countries in the world, despite rather aggressive tax regimes to pay for it. Perhaps there is some cherry picking going on here? Either as propaganda to show that the US is the happiest, or to show that money equals happiness - which might not be true in…
They are usually touted as being amongst the happiest countries in the world, despite rather aggressive tax regimes to pay for it.
Or, according to the World Happiness report 2013: 1. Denmark, 2. Norway, 3. Switzerland, 4. The Netherlands, 5. Sweden. The US ranks 17th.
Source: http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/09/WorldHappinessReport2013_onl...