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How much money do people need to be happy?

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Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#251

Post by leetcrew »

shoo wrote: post #246
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The point I'm trying to make here though, which I lightly implied, is that regressive tax systems and distributive justice lead to overal higher happiness. i.e., if there are diminishing marginal returns of happiness from money, it makes sense that Total Happiness in a country is optimised through a substantially regressive system. That's one of the interesting things about it.

> regressive tax systems and distributive justice lead to overal higher happiness. I suspect by "regressive tax" you mean "a tax rate that increases as the amount subject to taxation increases" . Wikipedia defines "regressive tax" to be the opposite one- where the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases. Or you're making a fairly non-obvious and interesting claim!

I believe NL taxes are in fact regressive in the usual sense of the word. I'm curious what the justification for this claim is as well.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#252

Post by dreamfactored »

Qwertious wrote: post #95
dreamfactored wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a level you can contribute to by being frugal. It's tough to get to but easier than you'd think. The barriers to moving to this level tend to be as much social and psychological as financial e.g. families, mortgages, need for security. The next level above financial independence is financial freedom (you can just get whatever you want, from shoes to houses) - off the top of my head I would guess this is probab…

>That's a level you can contribute to by being frugal. J suspect that ceteris paribus, being frugal reduces happiness - by definition, it's not getting things you want to get.

Maybe financial independence isn't for you. It doesn't suit most people in fact - most choose the greater financial security and predictability of a decent job. This is very helpful if you are an entrepreneur as you can hire people much smarter and more able than yourself.

Higher earners tend to just upgrade and spend more (apartment, clothes, restaurants, hotels etc), and aren't really living that differently - that lifestyle can certainly soak up maximum income achievable in a salaried job.

I think this is what the article inadvertently pointed to, that the higher salaries could lead to a sense of frustration that nothing really changed.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#253

Post by ikeyany »

projektir wrote: post #226
ikeyany wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the knowledge that you can immediately solve almost every problem that pops up with a bit of money, and figure out the details later. Missed your flight? Book another one. Car trouble? Call assistance and take an uber. Lost your job? Take a short vacation and then hit up your network on LinkedIn. And then your expectations shift, you require more expensive things to acquire that base level of prosperity and sa…

This seems to be a common assumption but I have not found it to be true in my experience at all. My spending habits appear stagnant and mostly rooted in my childhood experiences, and it's a continual battle to spend more. There's that idea that giving poor people money will have them just spend it gambling or buying drugs, doesn't seem to be true, either. A lot of these just sound like justifications to pay people le…

Do you mind me asking how your spending habits have remained constant? Do you rent or own? What part of the country do you live in? Have you any kids?

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#255

Post by leetcrew »

jjeaff wrote: post #238
howeyc wrote: post #17

Kind of makes sense to me, once you get to a point where you're set. That is you can easily afford the main things (housing, food), plus the extras (electronics, vacations, hobbies) you need a much larger income to "move the needle" so to speak. You still need to work 40 hours a week or whatever, and only get X weeks of vacation. Having a 180K salary instead of 150K doesn't change any of these obligations, or change…

I believe Bill Gates at one point said that there wasn't a lot of idfference, lifestyle wise between $10m and $10b. I think the biggest difference would be the outsized political, social influence and your own private jet. But of course even at $10m you could easily afford to rent a jet pretty frequently.

if you have $10mil, you're not burning much more than ~$400k a year if you're smart. a charter flight across the continental US costs at least $6k. so you could definitely do that from time to time, but if you do it even once a month you are blowing almost a fifth of your yearly budget on transportation. you are probably gonna feel that.

edit: the figure I used is just the cheapest possible aircraft you can rent. if you actually want a jet, you are looking at $10,500 and up, which would make your monthly flight eat more like 32% of your budget. most people are going to find this untenable.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#256

Post by leetcrew »

blahfuk wrote: post #254

Used to be 75K, now it's 105K. When will we finally admit that there is no satiation point, and rich people generally live better lives?

probably never. in a way, this broadly applicable quote applies: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

80% of people in the US make less than $75k. the idea that people experience diminishing returns on income is a strong argument in favor of redistribution, and is a couple notches more sophisticated than just saying outright that rich people don't deserve what they have. how many people are likely to seriously interrogate the claim that they deserve more than they are paid and/or would use it more efficiently?

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#257

Post by mbrodersen »

ivanhoe wrote: post #207
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really leads to a persistent feeling of danger, so yes, making 100k instead of 40k could literally save your life, or at least keep you from being an indebted loan shark victim for the rest of your life. Right, that problem just doesn't exist in the Netherlands. Basically everyone pays, I would guess, around $150 a month median for insurance, with a standard deviation of probably around $25. That covers anything…

But on the other hand taxes are significantly higher than in US, in order to finance that system. It's a trade off...

This is the big mistake people always make: focusing on the tax rate. Wake up. The tax rate does not matter. At all! What matters is the end result: your buying power. How much good stuff (goods and services) are you getting in return for the time you spend working? THAT is what matters.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#258

Post by projektir »

ikeyany wrote: post #253
projektir wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a common assumption but I have not found it to be true in my experience at all. My spending habits appear stagnant and mostly rooted in my childhood experiences, and it's a continual battle to spend more. There's that idea that giving poor people money will have them just spend it gambling or buying drugs, doesn't seem to be true, either. A lot of these just sound like justifications to pay people le…

Do you mind me asking how your spending habits have remained constant? Do you rent or own? What part of the country do you live in? Have you any kids?

I am speaking about spending habits, you seem to be talking about relative cost of life events. I don't have kids but kids are usually not what people are referring to since kids are a cost increase for all parties, rich and poor.

Basically, if I usually buy a certain Ikea table if I need a table, I still buy that Ikea table, and it still feels too expensive to me, regardless of the fact that I earn a lot more now. If I get an apartment that I like, I don't have any desire to get a more expensive one. I only want a more expensive one if the current one is really bothering me for some reason. I'm still uncomfortable with purchases of certain amounts, or buying things for myself in general (particularly, clothes and furniture). It's physically painful to spend certain amounts of money.

There's a set point in my brain for how things are supposed to cost, and that point is very hard to move. I.e., it takes actual effort to explain to my brain that I can spend more now. There's nothing automatic like the general wisdom suggests.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#259

Post by mathgladiator »

mailshanx wrote: post #232
mathgladiator wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think a difficult aspect of frugality is that is borders close with cheapness. Cheapness is a problem, and imagine if all your customers became cheaper and you lost a few. Well, you would have to become more frugal which means firing providers of services. It becomes a negative trend. I live near Seattle where $100K is probably a reasonable income (give or take $30K). Now, I make more than that by a large margi…

Wow, that's an awesome salary! What do you do for a living, and how did you get there?

Principal Software Engineer: I write ridiculous amounts of code, and I lead teams with an emphasis of building up people.

Re: How much money do people need to be happy?

#260

Post by zaarn »

withdavidli wrote: post #241
zaarn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious fix is that graduating shouldn't require someone to go into 100k+ debts. The entire cost for my graduation is probably come in under 1000€ total, 800€ will be tuition and the rest directly university related spending. (There is an additional 2k€ spending on stuff like a new laptop, software, etc. that wasn't necessarily required but made things easier).

Fixes are obvious, implementing it is the hard part. The propaganda for everyone to get a college degree is ingrained into the system. This sprouted countless for profit colleges charging obscene rates of $20k-$30k per year. Another obvious fix would be to spread good jobs around the country so we don’t have such concentrated HCOL cities. That’s as easily done as the suggestion of lowering cost of graduation to your…

Obviously it wouldn't be easy. The US education and employment system would have to ease of college degrees. Where I live, about 80% of my class had a job by the time they graduated secondary school. 20% went on for a higher education afterwards, of which only about 30% (or 6% of the original class) moved into College/University (the difference is muddy here).

And at every step, people jumped straight into employment from school.

US High School should focus on that. If a student graduates they should already have a job offer signed, that should be their primary target. If they don't they should be moving into higher education. College and other Institutions should have the same goal.

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