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This article/study claims the poor are not happy. The rich are, and:
Most remarkably of all, there is no maximum wealth threshold at which point higher incomes cease to boost well-being: quite simply, the richer, the better, with no upper limit.
I am reminding myself of all the posts that I have read in which people claim that they would be happy with just a modest amount more. I have been guilty of thinking that, once you have your basic needs met plus have some more money for discretionary spending, and there are no stressors for mortgages, retirement and tuition savings, a person could be very happy. Evidently, even that person could be happier.
No wonder that the rich just seem to want to accumulate more and more.
There are exceptions, though, like Bloomberg who takes no salary and gives huge amounts to charity.
We should be clear: the claim that income exerts a strong force on well-being is a claim
about the size of β, which we refer to as the well-being–income gradient. It is possible for this
gradient to be large, even if the correlation between well-being and income is small. That is, if
factors other than income account for much of the variation in well-being, then the correlation
may be low even though income has a quantitatively important effect on well-being. None of the
theories that we have discussed rule out other factors influencing well-being.
I'd also note that the paper attempts to argue that GDP growth improves well-being for all, not that rich people are happier than slightly less rich people which is the conclusion the author of the telegraph article is trying to make. The concept that the rich are happier than the poor is not novel.
The paper only argues that the average citizen does in fact benefit from rising GDP. Not that there's a statistically significant difference between being rich and being very rich.
And anyway, the measurement of happiness is in of itself, not a particularly easy thing to do. See for instance Daniel Kahneman's talk below:
It's not the wealth per se, it's relative wealth that buys little bit of happiness and whole a lot of additional life span (unrelated to availability of the premium medical care). Most satisfaction (and happiness) in life comes from feeling superior to other people. There is correlation between average life span and income inequality. Poor people do much better in the poor countries with moderate income inequalities than poor people in the rich countries where income inequality runs wild. American poor are a sad lot, I don't care what they say about third and second world countries, American poor have it worse because of the all-permeating status anxiety and social segregation it causes. I have not seen an American poor who's not a wreck in one way or another. I've seen plenty of reasonably happy & poor people in the 2nd world countries.
NOTHING buys happiness. NOTHING. I mean - NOTHING. Pursuit of Happiness, the movie, is one big BS. NO ONE ever in human history became happy from gain. Who they trying to fool?
Mathjak is correct again, as usual. Wealth in and of itself does not buy happiness, or anything else for that matter. The owner of said weath uses it to buy whatever he or she wants, and it's the owner choice that results in happiness or lack thereof. Money can't buy happiness, but it does provide choices, which if used wisely, could result in a much happier and more fullfilling life. Human nature being what it is, it's no suprise at all that it doesn't work that way for most.
Money only contributes to happiness to a certain extent. After that, the effect on emotional wellness wanes and eventually goes downward with increased wealth.
Personally, I would rather be healthy and have time for leisure rather than foregoing both for extra money.
But for that to work, you can't be wasting your money on things that don't buy "freedom".
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