Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence Against Satiation
happiness-science.org
happiness-science.org
This sounds obvious maybe but it's a bit different from money per se bringing happiness. It would be more about the perception of the work.
I also am not sure what to make of life satisfaction as a happiness indicator. It's a single item reflecting one aspect of happiness; there's other components of well-being. The author acknowledges this but it feels like a critical issue.
They have people for that too. It's called personal assistant or secretary.
Very few don't do it this way, basically all 'old money' work like that for generations, employing non-trivial amount of folks.
I agree with you, just one more thought:
Imagine that you received ungodly amounts (20x your current salary) of money for something you like to do. And if you did i some more of that in a day, you would get even more money. And then there would be people sending you letter that they want to take care of your mundane things for about 0.8x of your current salary, which means you can do more of the thing you like every day. Wouldn't you take it? I probably would :(.
That's not how this works.
You don't need much effort to "get the people show up": they'll do it because they need the money, and you have those.
Second, if you're rich, you have people managing the hiring and coordination of projects and maintenance, you don't even need to know how many people are in your overall staff.
In any case, far far far less than worrying about next month's rent, or even a leaking roof and you scrapping for money to fix it.
I now am lucky enough to have enough money for everything I need and that means almost all problems are a payment away from being solved. 99.9% of the problems become really small. The amount of time spent on every little problem before was absurd.
I can tell you from personal experience and observation, that the amount of bother the small things bring to people with FU money goes down drastically, especially if you give up the 50+ hour (including commutes) day job.
My retired grandad said "one todo a day is enough". It's much, much, better...
Or maybe it's the money itself all the way through. Just a lot of possibilities.
Imo, humans are hard wired to care about relative social standing. Income is a measure/indicator of social standing, among other things. Ideologically, we're resistant to the idea that we care about our ranking. We should care about absolutes... so I think this one is hard to study.
Generally speaking, human satisfaction tends to be relative. Relative to where we were. Relative to expectations... Relative to parents. Relative to last year. Etc.
This bias can also exist for lower-paying jobs, however I would guess proportionally there might be more 80-hour/week type high responsibility jobs in the higher paying brackets.
Numerous surveys show the people happiest in their jobs are hairdressers.
It's not highly paid, but it's a simple job in the warm and dry, chatting and making people happy.
Name me one job that is stressful for every single human being who ever lived on this planet. Or name a job that is never stressful for anyone.
You can spend whole life trying to find non-stressful job and never get it, because the problem is with you, not with your job.
> You can spend whole life trying to find non-stressful job and never get it, because the problem is with you, not with your job.
Sociopaths exist and can definitely make your job a misery.
I'm sure there are servicemembers who are super-chill under fire, and there's also anxious dog-walkers, but to say there's no meaningful distinction between jobs is ridiculous.
I do not say there is no distinction, I am saying how much someone gets stressed depends on their mental state, physical and emotional parameters that are not being taken care of. Its like if you try to make a city car perform on a level with racing cars it will break quickly - this is the same thing as stress.
There is a correlation between age and happiness. People of retirement age are generally happier than people in their forties. It's probably safe to conclude that retired people are happier than they themselves were when they were working. Even though they will have less income. So yes, what brings in the money matters: Not having to work makes you happier. Presumably the wealthy group correlates with not having to work. Or maybe only working a CEO-level job that consists of golfing with business partners and leaving the rest to others.
Yes:
> One could draw a snap judgment from this analysis and conclude that money, in fact, simply buys happiness. I think that would be the wrong conclusion. Clever sociologists will always find new ways of “calculating” that marriage matters most, or social fitness explains all, or income is paramount. But the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity. They rise together and fall together. Low-income Americans have seen the largest declines in marriage and experience the most loneliness. High-income Americans marry more and have not only richer investment accounts but also richer social lives. In this light, the philosophical question of what contributes most to happiness is just the beginning. The deeper question is why the trinity of happiness is so stratified by income—and whether well-being in America is in danger of becoming a luxury good.
* https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-...
Now, let's take the Aristotelian definition of happiness: It is about doing good and matching one's nature with one's actions. Then I would design questions like:
- Do you feel that your life is interconnected with the lives of others?
- When you reflect, do you feel that your life is what it should be?
- Are you satisfied with your life?
- In your daily life you do things out of obligation that do not correspond to your true nature?
- etc.
It all depends on what definition of happiness you take, and the one selected by the sponsors of the work I guess is not mine.
[1]Source: https://go.trackyourhappiness.org/
- In most respects, my life is close to my ideal.
- The conditions of my life are excellent.
- I am satisfied with my life.
- So far I have achieved the important things I want in life.
- If I could live my life over again, I would change almost nothing.
Aristotle by the way, did not believe that people with insufficient means could ever be as happy/good as (read; experience levels of eudoimonia commensurate with) freeborn males with plentiful means; and he was big on "natural slavery", which the Stoics disagreed with.
Rich people do good by being rich, slaves do good by being slaves.
I suspect this study is confirming a result that's already well known because I've heard this result before (linear happiness scales for an exponential increase in wealth).
I remember comparing this to having toilets in work. You will be happy with having at least one in your office. It will be good to have two toilets and it will bring more happiness, but what about having 10 toilets? It will not linearly provide more happiness to the office.
It is good to have enough money to be able to live a convenient life. The rest is up to you. To your goals. To your motivations. Some people will never be satisfied just by having a big pile of cash only.
If you play a game with infinite ammo, infinite health it becomes boring quite easily.
It's about cultivation. If you spend much time developing interest and taste in a domain, you will enjoy happiness. You are building your capacity for happiness. Money is only part of the equation, it's like potential energy. As long as money is not a hinderance you can almost forget about it. Experience is the other part, how you invest your time.
However, this never happens in the real world: You buy a nice car, then a nice house, then go to nice vacations, eat better, healthier food.
Then you realize that there are layers of nicer everything above what you consider "nice". Build a more ambitious company, and end up building rockets to explore the solar system and make humanity multi-planetary, cure illnesses, extend knowledge or education or peace.
Our ancestors did not take it for granted to have a toilet. In fact, there are still people alive today who grew up with no family toilet, who later got one. Just as there are people who had to hand wash their clothes and their dishes, but now have a machine to do it.
I grew up without internet, and I didn't miss it.
Now, I will be miserable if you take away any of those things.
Therefore shiny new things do not provide happiness.
Minecraft Creative mode would dare to disagree.
Which are limited by... your money. Money means options, the more of it you have, the more choices you have.
Of course happiness isn't O(n) with the balance on your bank account. Having money doesn't buy happiness. Buying happiness buys happiness. Money is distilled, fully generalized power. You have to exercise that power to get the benefit.
I would be very happy with zero toilets. It means office has to close, and we work from home. It happed a few times when toilet broke.
> but what about having 10 toilets
How about 200?! Personal private toilet is pretty reasonable minimal requirement for some people.
You know, depends on a country. In some places they would ask you to go outside lol
It's a paper aimed at those capable of understanding statistics and analysis. It's assumed that the reader is sufficiently educated to understand the implications of a log scale. If that assumption is out, the rest of the article is going to be meaningless to the reader too.
The article does say it has a US sample space too.
I didn't read too much into it, for the more detailed conclusions, however from a skim read the high level conclusion "richer people are more likely to happier" is correlated within the given income bracket.
This actually gets to my gripe with a lot of meta studies, where authors often yada yada pretty significant methodological differences in the name of increasing the sample size.
Our modern civilization has made money another basic need.
The major flaw in the study is that the HNWI survey was made in 1985, fourty years ago. Lifestyle and social behavior is much different now.
Today, the social expectations on say, eating out at restaurants frequently, traveling for vacation, and so on are expensive, and to be a deliberately frugal person living in an urban area requires a lot of discipline and asocial behavior that wasn't necessary before.
It would be interesting to do a study like this that selected people who care less about money, or at least cared less about the social expectations of money – and then see what an extra $500 or $5,000 would do.
1. Assuming their basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, parks, etc. are met with a decent level of quality.
If only you can't afford a computer, then you can't talk to anyone, who have all gathered online, and you can't know about community events, and you didn't see the latest meme people are joking about.
So it's not about whether or not I can afford a computer.
So it's a win-win situation!
That stuff was "keeping up with the Joneses", though. Check out the price for even a simple bedframe in the pre-industrial era. Such things may seem like 'simple' necessities to us now, but for people of the era, budgeting money and/or home-crafting time for even basics like clothes, furniture, and work tools was a major ongoing commitment.
In other words, if a group of people today made a town where everyone had anti-FOMO/consumerist values, kids only had a few wooden toys and not 5,000 Pokemon cards, etc., I don't think the lack of money and stuff would make them less happy.
This makes me think that a group like the Amish would be worth studying WRT money and happiness.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/21f7/1b1ce15b2541bb74fef385...
But I guess it's selection bias. If you're the sort of person who likes living frugally and otherwise doing whatever you want, you're less likely to end up making 500k to begin with.
It's kind of like asking why are assholes and psychopaths over-represented in the ultra-rich, it's possible to make it to eight figure net worth on talent, hard work and good luck, but to make it that far and wanting to just keep on going says... something.
I guess it comes down to what you see as negative impacts. I'd never been further than maybe 1500 miles from home until my mid teens, so I don't feel like my kids miss out by not having the kind of globetrotter holidays that people on $500k can do. If I had that kind of money, I'd rather save it and escape the grind ten or twenty years earlier. But I guess if your $500k peers are all going to Dubai and Singapore with their families you might feel differently.
Same with cars, clothes and so on. I'm not talking about barebones ramen living, more trying to take an objective view on the relationship between spend and quality of life, and outside of a few of the most expensive cities, there's a pretty sweet spot well below the 500k mark.
But if you find a job not because you want to keep up with your neighbour but the one which you personally see useful and do it with a sense of purpose then you can easily work extra hours and be happy.
If I had enough money to be "early retired", I would probably still spend most of my days doing something meaningful, but the difference would be that I could take a break any time I would want to, change my focus anytime I would want to, etc. So it would feel completely different from having to follow someone else's rules.
If you have an unlimited supply of something, then all your vices could be fuelled. And if that happens then are you strong enough to resist temptation. And if not, then you happiness will probably decrease.
"Hanging out in ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated."
"In sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor."
Fortunately if you're a billionaire you have plenty of time and opportunity to reflect and find something truly fulfilling.
Persson, getting somewhat sensible again:
"To people out there with real problems: I’m sorry the whining of a newly wealthy programmer gets more attention than yours. Stay strong."
Anyway, the billionaire tier (or even just UHNWI >$30mln) are the extreme outliers. I would imagine that it can be really tough to form new close relationships or find life partners if they didn't before they got ultra wealthy.
Living paycheck to paycheck is likely stressful at any income. Having wealth likely less stressful at any income.
Either you're spending like there's no tomorrow, or you've over leveraged to try and live like someone wealthier still. And the actual material difference is in diminishing returns territory at that point, so there's got to be a psychological driver there.
Sometimes I wonder if the folk wisdom that "money doesn't buy happiness" is an attempt by the poor to make themselves feel better about their own life situations.
Yes, there is one rich person whose life sucks, so money doesn't always buy happiness. But there are thousands of poor people whose lives suck, so maybe being rich actually significantly decreases the risk.
I don't understand how people could say that health is more important.
What's the point of being healthy if you don't have money? You have to spend your entire life being a slave doing stuff you hate... Why bother existing? In that case, good health feels more like a curse.
Family is more important? If you don't have money in this day and age, you can kiss your whole family goodbye... If you even managed to assemble one in the first place... Love doesn't matter when there is no money. There's no energy to engage in such abstractions.
God is more important than money? Then give me all your money. See how fast your god turns against you. About as fast as your faith evaporates.
Without money, the best you can do, the best you can be, just ain't good enough.
Some people will say that money is not the only measure of success... Yeah sure, if you can live in a forest with no money and convince a partner to live there with you, that would be success. But good luck.
What if there was a way to be utterly blissful without no money, no wife, no nothing? Well, who knows maybe there is ;)
Unfortunately, I was born indoctrinated (brainwashed) into this society's ways, so this has created expectations and baselines for what I consider to be the 'minimal comfort required to make existence worthwhile' - To unlearn all this stuff, to 'uncondition' myself from all the stuff I've been taught since I was an infant, is a difficult challenge. Not only, that, but because social relationships are critical for humans, I need friends and a partner who have also been unconditioned. Very hard to find. If such people even exist, they won't be found online by definition.
So yeah, money is crucial. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't have much money. You can be sure there is no bias there.
The lack of money has forced me to confront my biases. I can't afford biases or blind-spots.
I'm jealous of rich people, green with envy. What I'm most jealous of though, is their blind spots. Having blind-spots is life's greatest luxury. Pure psychological comfort.
Whenever someone says that money is not the most important thing. I see someone with blind-spots who probably has money or is getting some kind of help; from friends, family or the system itself is geared to help them.
They don't understand that the system itself is far from neutral. The system is essentially never neutral, no matter where you sit in it; it either helps you or works against you. I was there, on the other side, my idea of normal was an illusion. I didn't realize how fortunate I was until I found myself on the other side of the equation.
To explain it concretely, the design of the monetary system works like a 'luck allocator'; it decides how lucky you are depending on the topology of your social network and your place within it. There are all sorts of barriers in place (conditioning/brainwashing) designed to prevent you from moving up in the topology. If you're wrongly placed in the topology, you will be perpetually unlucky. You will rarely see any opportunities no matter how good you are or what you do. You will be forced to accept only bad opportunities which exploit you and further entrench you in your place in the topology or shift you further down.
The conditioning/brainwashing gets stronger as you approach the big money; that's why upward mobility is so difficult; wealthy people are conditioned to feel uncomfortable around you, no matter how good you are. It works in surprising ways. Rationally, they can see that you tick all the boxes, but in their gut, they feel like something is off about you and that prevents them from letting you progress.
They don't even realize or appreciate how incredibly difficult it is for someone who 'feels off' to reach their vicinity and what kinds of skills are required to clear all the barriers. They don't understand that the people in their entourage who 'seem off' are probably often the ones they should prioritize because those atypical folks had to work the hardest to get here. Wealthy people are accustomed to comfort, especially psychological comfort. An individual who had to climb Mt Kilimanjaro while fighting off lions and hyenas cannot exude psychological comfort and familiarity in the same way as someone who was born with a silver spoon and never left home.
It's hard to elicit the combo of "Wow, that person has seen things I cannot begin to imagine" and also "Yet they're so relatable..."
Wealthy people don't make friends 'randomly' like the rest of us. That's why rich people all seem to know and mostly hang out with each other. They seek psychological comfort from people who have similar life experiences. They are in their position because of their their blind-spots, overzealous awkward-meter, their predictability. It's also why the distortions in our system are so hard to fix. Almost nobody who has the ability to fix the distortions, sees the distortions to begin with.
There is nothing more wrong than this statement. There are way bigger things in life than comfort. And having blind spots will make you lose all your "riches" in one way or another. Aren't there enough stories of rich people going down with drugs, bad management, family issues etc?
Rich people have a huge psychological discomfort because they need to worry about staying rich 24/7. In that state they can't reach even a piece of mind, forget about states of bliss and beyond. Their only comfort is thinking they are better than others, that is a comfort of a fool and life will make sure one will pay for it.
It's true that beyond a certain point you can buy what everyone wants, which is freedom - from capitalism.
But there is ample evidence from the news of extremely high net worth people acting in ways that are petulant, destructive to self and others, and don't suggest happiness at all.
From a game theory stand point a billionaire won. Carve your name in history, you can choose to influence politics for the good, pour money into hard research problems in Healthcare, Environment, Energy. Go Genghis Khan and have a thousand children. They could do literally anything and yet choose to continue to increase value for shareholders and themselves, it seems illogical.
> As the figure shows, the wealthy individuals are considerably happier than the high earners in the income group.
Absolutely, 100%. Money has made me very happy. Once I saved up enough money from a high-paying job, I was able to quit and do whatever I liked. And I love every minute of it now. No 9-5, no wasting time doing things I don't want to do.
The more money you have, the less you have to waste your precious finite time doing shit you don't want to do. Money allows you to pursue your hobbies, travel, and just have time to appreciate life.
It does take less than people think. You just need enough to buy a cheap house in the middle of nowhere, an ability to give up some luxuries (big city life if you like that, new stuff all the time), and the intelligence to set up a few sources of relatively passive income and/or set up a way to make a little money from hobbies in a surfer-like part-time fashion.
But assuming that is true, what skills do you have? Can you relocate? What do you consider essential? Feel free to email me if you want with your situation if you want.
My opinion is this: it is easier than you think but it requires some very unusual thinking and taking leaps of faith, and yes, it involves a little bit of what society might consider "risky" but less risky than people think. It requires a bit of discomfort but mostly of the mental kind. My belief though is that IF you are smart enough with your life, you can certainly escape.
I know these things aren't playbooks you can just run along, but I find these stories uplifting :)
Decent houses (2-3 bedrooms, well insulated) go for around 300k (within an hour of a regional city like Toulouse).
Its rather simple to understand, whatever job you were "wasting" time on, if there is at least 1 human being on this planet who does this same job and is happy then problem is not in this job, problem is with you.
If you have clear understanding of this you can do whatever job for any amount of hours and be happy. In fact I know thousands people working without being payed at all and they are way happier than highest income people you can imagine. Because they took time to learn how to keep themselves happy.
That makes no sense whatsoever and does not take into account preference. That's like saying "if there's at least one person that likes garlic ice cream, then you disliking it is just a frame of mind".
Your logic is strange. What if I found one person who managed to obtain enlightenment from meditation and achieve happiness in a concentration camp. Would you then say that other people not being happy in a concentration camp is their problem because they couldn't do the same thing?
Yes, absolutely. And of course I'm not saying that concentration camps are any good or anything like that.
This logic may seem strange because in external situations what one person can do another can not do simply because of different capabilities.
But when it comes to internal experiences, if you had even 1 moment of happiness in your life that means you are able to create that experience. You just didn't unravel the mechanics of it, but some people did and by my own experience I can confirm that its possible to have inner experience be whatever you want independent of the outside conditions.
What they found out (seemingly very long time ago) is essentially that human experience happens from within. There are external situations which may stimulate that, but in the end it always happens from within. This is very easy to observe in people from different cultures/backgrounds having completely different responses to the same exact situation.
If that is established the next question is how do I create the experience I want? And what I want for myself is of course the utmost pleasantness. So they figured out many different methods, strange and exotic, but the important thing is they are working.
I did try a few of them and one did work in a huge way so I feel that I must speak up when people discuss such vital topics like happiness in primitive terms of "money make people happy", "freedom makes people happy", "family makes people happy" etc.
... Until you need any medical care. Also, good schools for the kids. And being with reach of people to connect with. Cities have huge value.