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tl;dr - A new study finds that $105,000 is the income level at which people no longer feel happier earning more money. This updates the previous number, $75,000, from a 2010 study. Personally, I’m deeply skeptical of any psychology or sociology research that relies on magic numbers like “105,000”. As far as I can tell, the study doesn’t even account for cost of living.
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Why should it be any higher? Raise the baseline too high and you may never reach it, and never be happy, despite having a good life. Is that what you want?
> Why should it be any higher? Because it can be. Because we’re the richest country in the world and yet for some reason we force people into bankruptcy because they didn’t have health insurance on the day they had a medical emergency. I want: 1. People not to have to worry about seeing a doctor because they can’t afford it. 2. People not to have to worry about having shelter. 3. People not to have to worry about whe…
If you look at the happiness income in East Asia, you'll note it's higher than in the US. This indicates that the value is not absolute (things you need to be happy) but it's relative to the area. The best indicator of happiness related to income I have seen concluded that the income is relative to the income of your peers: if they make more money, you will be less happy, if they make less, you will be more happy. Th…
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> Why should it be any higher? Because it can be. Because we’re the richest country in the world and yet for some reason we force people into bankruptcy because they didn’t have health insurance on the day they had a medical emergency. I want: 1. People not to have to worry about seeing a doctor because they can’t afford it. 2. People not to have to worry about having shelter. 3. People not to have to worry about whe…
You actually seem to be pretty much in agreement with the person you originally replied to. I only read you as calling out a few more specific examples of what causes anxiety but it’s completely possible they are encapsulated in quote “etc.”.
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You actually seem to be pretty much in agreement with the person you originally replied to. I only read you as calling out a few more specific examples of what causes anxiety but it’s completely possible they are encapsulated in quote “etc.”.
My point is that if those needs are met, then happiness becomes a question of what personally makes you happy and not just what you need to not be homeless.
If you're always questioning if you're happy enough, you'll never truly reach happiness.
So one obtains shelter, and healthcare, and an education, and all those things you listed. And they're still not happy? If cake is the baseline, is more icing going to make that much better?
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What do you hate and why can't you automate it?
Seriously? Cooking, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, driving to places, filling out tax returns, shopping for clothes or household goods.... Fully automated solutions for any of the above either do not exist or are prohibitively expensive.
The alternatives are not prohibitively expensive, on the contrary. You have restaurants, apartments, parks and public transport as alternatives.
It seems to me that quite some people here want to get rich to afford hiring people to manage things that they don't actually want to own. That's why I think more money doesn't make you more happy, as happiness comes from the sense of accomplishment, not from being able to command an army of workers to work on things you don't care about.
"Are you happy?" is such a first-world-problems question. I'd settle for being able to answer "yes" to "are your basic needs met?" for myself and my family in perpetuity...
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You actually seem to be pretty much in agreement with the person you originally replied to. I only read you as calling out a few more specific examples of what causes anxiety but it’s completely possible they are encapsulated in quote “etc.”.
My point is that if those needs are met, then happiness becomes a question of what personally makes you happy and not just what you need to not be homeless.
I have observed that people who reach that state aren't looking for "more money" so much as they are looking for something that is more fulfilling for them personally. And the article observes that as well.
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I would not be surprised if you were exactly right with this: I would say that having no debt, or at least having manageable debt, along with knowing you are saving enough for retirement, and making enough that you don't have to second-guess if you can afford every purchase you make, is the real cutoff. Many people I have talked with about happiness are really talking about non-anxiety. Basically defining being 'happ…
What a sad indictment of modern American life that our baseline for happiness is "not destitute". Really, I think that's telling, and as a millennial with lots of student loan debt and friends in a similar boat, it's not surprising one bit.
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Seriously? Cooking, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, driving to places, filling out tax returns, shopping for clothes or household goods.... Fully automated solutions for any of the above either do not exist or are prohibitively expensive.
Why have kitchen/house/lawn/car at all when you don't actually enjoy using them? The alternatives are not prohibitively expensive, on the contrary. You have restaurants, apartments, parks and public transport as alternatives. It seems to me that quite some people here want to get rich to afford hiring people to manage things that they don't actually want to own. That's why I think more money doesn't make you more hap…
That's often due to them actually wanting those things but not for themselves but for showing them off as status markers.