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Money can buy happiness

economist.com

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Re: Money can buy happiness

#161

Post by slurry »

Sakes wrote: post #159
Sakes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 every…

Slurry Discussion Continued: If you are making the argument that there is a monetary threshold that needs to be met in order to be happy (for a normal person) I would agree. What that exact threshold is I am not sure. In my youth I had enough to be happy on 40k a year even though I wasn't, but this was due to a lack of understanding/perspective. If you are making the argument that money directly buys happiness, I wou…

Not sure we actually disagree. I wasn't taking issue with your main point or your list so much just costing it out (roughly) for my own amusement. Both a sense of perspective and a modicum of cash are necessary but not, imho, by themselves sufficient to be happy. Together maybe they are enough? Maybe not? Idk.

Appreciate your continuation of the discussion.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#162

Post by slurry »

alextingle wrote: post #155
slurry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once you have no debt and a place to sleep, the rest of it is pretty cheap and easy to obtain. I own my house with no debt - a minimal income is quite enough for me. (I'm in the UK, so the NHS deals with health care.)

Isn't this a bit like saying once you have a killer jump shot, basketball is easy? A lot of things are pretty easy once you've got an extremely hard part out of the way.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#163

Post by slurry »

aestra wrote: post #135
slurry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have no debt and significant savings/investments but that is because I don’t own a house. We have this social expectation in the USA that one must be a homeowner or they are nobody or haven't made it. Even those who can't afford a house have one. I also paid only 12,000 for my small car that is extra fuel efficient instead of buying an expensive car or SUV even though I could afford one.

Good move. IMHO homeownership is inadvisable where it can be avoided.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#164

Post by Sakes »

slurry wrote: post #161
Sakes wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slurry Discussion Continued: If you are making the argument that there is a monetary threshold that needs to be met in order to be happy (for a normal person) I would agree. What that exact threshold is I am not sure. In my youth I had enough to be happy on 40k a year even though I wasn't, but this was due to a lack of understanding/perspective. If you are making the argument that money directly buys happiness, I wou…

Not sure we actually disagree. I wasn't taking issue with your main point or your list so much just costing it out (roughly) for my own amusement. Both a sense of perspective and a modicum of cash are necessary but not, imho, by themselves sufficient to be happy. Together maybe they are enough? Maybe not? Idk. Appreciate your continuation of the discussion.

Thanks for the clarification.

"Both a sense of perspective and a modicum of cash are necessary but not, imho, by themselves sufficient to be happy."

I am 100% in agreement with this.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#165

Post by DanBC »

I know that if I had just £1,000 that I'd be a lot happier. I'd be able to focus on recovery rather than all the nonsense that I worry on at the moment.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#166

Post by billmalarky »

btilly wrote: post #122
auctiontheory wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Are you asserting that as fact? Where I live, someone making 100K is just getting by and not saving very much, even with the 5% raise (he certainly couldn't buy a house), whereas for someone making 1M, the extra $50K is "free" money.

WHERE you live, or HOW you live? I've seen many people complain about not making enough to live where they live, when I clearly see lifestyle changes that would fix the income problem, and I see people living alongside the first who make less and save more. I don't know you. Or your life circumstances. It might not be true for you. But "$100k/year isn't enough to survive" is the kind of claim that I've learned to be…

I could see a family (of even 3) struggling to live a middle class lifestyle on 100K a year in the more expensive cities in America.

There's a huge difference between 100K in Tennessee vs 100k in NYC or SF.

Re: Money can buy happiness

#167

Post by billmalarky »

randomdata wrote: post #71
marquis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a thought experiment. Assume that both neighbourhoods provide the same services.

Does it even matter what your neighbours are making? I've made four figures living among millionaires and I've made six figures living among people living on welfare. I didn't really feel any different in either spot. Challenging yourself to earn more, and actually seeing the numbers rise, is where the joy comes from, at least in my experience. If you are challenging yourself and your income isn't rising (or falling,…

"I've made four figures living among millionaires and I've made six figures living among people living on welfare. I didn't really feel any different in either spot."

Then for better or worse, you are unusual. Most people notice disturbances when they are significantly different from their peers in this regard.

However, I wonder if location is having less of an impact now that we connect with our peers over technology instead of physical location (IE, neighbors).

Re: Money can buy happiness

#168

Post by TheCoelacanth »

rtpg wrote: post #36
billyjobob wrote: post #28

The 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.

people are actually pretty bad at defining where they are on the wealth scale. For example, loads of very rich Americans seem to think they're middle class (the WSJ once portrayed a middle-class family as earning $100000 a year, which actually places them in the top quintile). This article describes how it is a relatively universal factor though (everyone thinks they're kinda in the middle)( http://economix.blogs.nyt…

$100k/year is very much in line with what an actual sociologist would describe as middle class. Most of the upper quintile is part of the middle class. Most sociologists describe the top 1-5% as upper class. The next ~45% is middle class, then the next 30-40% is working class, then the remaining 10% or so is poor/lower class[1].

The upper class is made up of capitalists, high-level executives and people with inherited wealth. People who work in professional occupations such as doctors or engineers are not part of the upper class.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#Academic_...

Re: Money can buy happiness

#169

Post by shas3 »

acchow wrote: post #147
pyduan wrote: post #56

This is one of the big controversies in happiness economics. I wonder if this effect (which directly contradicts Easterlin's findings that money has no effect on happiness past a certain point; here, they contend that there is no saturation point and that happiness evolves with the logarithm of income) could be somewhat due to the way they framed the question: "assume you are on a ladder of happiness with 10 steps, w…

> people care more about how much they earn compared to their neighbors Evolution should select for this "comparative success" behavior, possibly even if its only advantage is as a signal for mating.

Evolution and (what you presumably refer to as) natural selection don't work that way. It is a pernicious mistake to apply 'evolution' and 'natural selection' to everything. In the interest of good science and the society's well being [1] we should resist the temptation to unscrupulously apply 'evolution' in non-specific, and non-evolutionary biology contexts. Social Darwinism is especially pernicious.

[1] http://io9.com/how-the-pseudoscience-of-social-darwinism-nea...

Re: Money can buy happiness

#170

Post by btilly »

billmalarky wrote: post #166
btilly wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHERE you live, or HOW you live? I've seen many people complain about not making enough to live where they live, when I clearly see lifestyle changes that would fix the income problem, and I see people living alongside the first who make less and save more. I don't know you. Or your life circumstances. It might not be true for you. But "$100k/year isn't enough to survive" is the kind of claim that I've learned to be…

I could see a family (of even 3) struggling to live a middle class lifestyle on 100K a year in the more expensive cities in America. There's a huge difference between 100K in Tennessee vs 100k in NYC or SF.

This depends on your expectations about what a "middle class lifestyle" includes.

Let's take NYC. The fact is that in New York City, the median household income is about $50k/year. (Last year it was $50,895.) So if we define a "middle class lifestyle" as that which those in the middle can afford, well, by definition you're going to get by very well following that lifestyle while making $100k/year! Even if your household has 3 people in it.

But if you define "middle class lifestyle" according to the way you think that you peer group is living, well, I've known people making $200k+ who experience "trouble getting by".

Now I can understand making more, choosing to live better, and running into financial trouble because of it. But if you do that and blame anyone but yourself, well, I've got nothing in the way of sympathy for you.

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