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Money can buy happiness

economist.com

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Re: Money can buy happiness

#101

Post by slurry »

Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

1. No debt is fairly expensive in this world. Either you need a nontrivial income or a fairly high threshold for ascetic living.

2. Full stomach/quenched thirst is trivial if you don't mind tap water and simple starches, but once you add (depending on your taste) a complement of steak, quinoa, fresh fruits, beer and/or wine - then you run into a little money.

3. Warm place to sleep - anywhere near work? public transport? "good" schools (however you define that)? Gets expensive quick.

3bis. Meaningful intimate loving relationships are easier to maintain if you have at least one weekend day off (i.e. don't have to work 2 or more jobs) and have at least a little cash to go out on the town at least once in a while.

4. Sense that I am valuable - to me, this has always been difficult without a modestly good set of clothes, shoes and a haircut. Others don't feel that way (but less than you'd think). But maintaining a personal sense of one's value is at least somewhat correlated with others' sense of ones' value. And others' sense of one's value is never completely monetarily free.

5-6. Freedom to indulge curiosities and spiritual life - on a low income, you'd better be single and childless. And even then, it's a challenge.

I very much doubt the average person could fulfill those goals to any degree of satisfaction on less than 50k as a single person in a major metro area, not a ton less in the boondocks, and not much less than double that with a partner or spouse.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#102

Post by Sakes »

mertd wrote: post #100
Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

That is pretty much Maslow's pyramid.

I'm not sure if your comment trivializes or validates mine. But in any event, I am very much a student of the school of hard knocks. Everything I mentioned above are my conclusions derived from over a decade of failures, successes, & self reflection.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#103

Post by deskglass »

leoedin wrote: post #3

The 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.

According to the paper (page 13), they only look at incomes between the 10th and 90th percentiles. That's why they cut off at $128,000 for US residents.

With that said, I do think it'd be interesting to see a graph that continues past the 90th percentile.

The paper: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18992?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_mediu...

Re: Money can buy happiness

#104

Post by foobarian »

Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

Should probably put health somewhere near (1).

Re: Money can buy happiness

#105

Post by foobarian »

mb_72 wrote: post #52

People become acclimatised to 'new wealth'. One thing I learned from life experience, and then actually understood after studying Buddhist philosophy, is that it's very easy to enter a repetitive cycle of desire, some achievement, then more desire ... one yearns to make more money, makes it (via payrise or other successful project), gets used to having that money, wants more, makes more, and so on. The trick is to be…

I like the whole ascetic lifestyle philosophy but I find it harder to follow with a family and kids. At this point I'm perfectly fine with doing a number of distasteful materialistic things such as taking on debt or owning a house, because it benefits the kids and they don't have to know about the decisions.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#106

Post by Sakes »

foobarian wrote: post #104
Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

Should probably put health somewhere near (1).

Good point and you are correct. I would do that, but I think you just did it for me. Thank you.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#107

Post by Sakes »

slurry wrote: post #101
Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

1. No debt is fairly expensive in this world. Either you need a nontrivial income or a fairly high threshold for ascetic living. 2. Full stomach/quenched thirst is trivial if you don't mind tap water and simple starches, but once you add (depending on your taste) a complement of steak, quinoa, fresh fruits, beer and/or wine - then you run into a little money. 3. Warm place to sleep - anywhere near work? public transp…

When I comment on this site I try very hard to say exactly what I mean and nothing more. I believe, but may be mistaken, that you have made some assumptions about what I was saying.

Above I asserted an objective truth, and followed it with my list of subjective truths.

Objective truth: Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. To elaborate, to evaluate the value of everything in life based upon its monetary value would be a mistake and limiting.

Then came my list of subjective truths which I prefaced with "For me this is". By subjective I mean I acknowledge that while I hold these to be true, I am unable to prove to you that they are.

To address your points: I really need to get back to coding my startup. I will revisit this later. I hope that you continue to discuss this with me even though no one else will care by the time I get back to it. (From the HN community perspective this thread will be most likely dead before this evening)

Re: Money can buy happiness

#108

Post by bake »

The distinction between INCOME and WEALTH here is important, a distinction which the title/thesis of this article ignores.

The title implies that simply POSSESSING money (wealth) is positively related to happiness, whereas the survey could only support the claim that EARNING money (income) is positively related to happiness.

I would argue that income is a much better proxy for the value a person creates in the world than is wealth (though both are deeply, deeply imperfect). I would much more readily believe a survey which implies 'people who believe they create more value in the world are more likely to be happy'.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#109

Post by zurn »

slurry wrote: post #101
Sakes wrote: post #86

Money can buy security and that security increases your happiness. Not having money can make you unhappy. Sustainable happiness is recognizing what is truly valuable in life and appreciating it. For me this is: 1) No debt 2) Full stomach/quenched thirst 3) A warm place to sleep 3) Meaningful intimate loving relationships 4) A sense that I am valuable (adding value to the world or some subset) 5) Freedom to indulge my…

1. No debt is fairly expensive in this world. Either you need a nontrivial income or a fairly high threshold for ascetic living. 2. Full stomach/quenched thirst is trivial if you don't mind tap water and simple starches, but once you add (depending on your taste) a complement of steak, quinoa, fresh fruits, beer and/or wine - then you run into a little money. 3. Warm place to sleep - anywhere near work? public transp…

Poor countries and poor indiviudals tend to have low debt levels.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#110

Post by adwf »

Dewie wrote: post #85
adwf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it'd be interesting if there was a study on population size vs. happiness. I imagine there would be an inverse correlation (smaller population, more happy). But whether you could isolate the cause would be a different matter. For example: is Norway happy because they have a small population with massive, well-managed oil reserves to pay for their social services? Or are they happy because with a smaller populat…

> For example: is Norway happy because they have a small population with massive, well-managed oil reserves to pay for their social services? The oil reserves don't pay for the social services. Some of the reserves are spent in the budget, but that is mostly skimming off the "interests", and there are restrictions put in place on how much you can use (maybe you already knew this; your wording was a bit ambiguous).

Yeah I did, I was just trying to point out a potential difference between being a rich country and happy vs. a small, politically engaged country and happy.
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