[Leanan]

Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

Touches a bit on "Stumbling On Happiness" (people are terrible at predicting what will or won't make them happy) and "The Paradox of Choice" (too much choice makes people unhappy). But it ends with this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f more money doesn't buy more happiness, then the behavior of most Americans looks downright insane, as we work harder and longer, decade after decade, to fatten our W-2s. But what is insane for an individual is crucial for a national economy—that is, ever more growth and consumption. Gilbert again: "Economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy … Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will strive only for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being." In other words, if you want to do your part for your country's economy, forget all of the above about money not buying happiness.

[Zardoz]

Rich people who are not happy are just bad shoppers.

[frankthetank]

I don't have a lot of interaction with the wealthy people, but i do know a family who probably is near/or the wealthiest in this area and they seem happy, but they don't really "do" anything other then buy everything/drive everywhere/build new cabins (mansions) and eat. I think money, if used correctly, can buy happiness (in the form of FREE TIME!). Time is worth more then anything, just ask a dead person.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', '.')..buy everything/drive everywhere/build new cabins (mansions) and eat...

[Tyler_JC]

Money doesn't buy happiness if you're surrounded by people wealthier than you.

Equality of opportunity, equal rights, etc. bring happiness.

But if people feel as though they can't move up in society, they will be unhappy.

Mind you, most of America's struggling middle class are considered wealthy by modern global standards and downright rich compared to historical examples.

In America, we are constantly exposed to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. This leads to a feeling of jealousy and inadequacy for those not in the top 1%.

Also, middle and upper middle class Americans never come into contact with the truly needy. They complain when they have to put in a few hours a week of overtime to pay the credit card bills...but have they ever gone to bed hungry? Have they ever been on the verge of homelessness? Have they had to eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and hamburger helper because they can't afford real food?

The irony is that as America has gotten wealthier, its citizens feel poorer.

The Great Depression felt horrible because Americans suddenly had to live with the horror of having the same standard of living as their parents generation.

If the economic does in fact enter another depression, we might be knocked down to 1997, 1987, or who knows, maybe even 1977.

[frankthetank]

Zardoz- They pay cash (thats the difference!) and lets just say one of their kids (KIDS) in a year, put over 40,000 miles on a vehicle that gets roughly 10mpg. Thats a lot of driving for someone with no job, nowhere to go.

I think articles like these are put out as a morale booster for all the newly jobless and underpaid. Keeps them happy knowing the wealthy aren't happy.

[Leanan]

One of the reasons money doesn't buy happiness is that "diminishing returns" applies to spending as much as to discovering oil. If you're poor, winning $10,000 in the lottery is life-changing. If you're middle class, you'll be very happy. If you're Bill Gates, you'll barely notice. The more you have, the more it takes to make a difference.

Another reason is the "paradox of choice." People are actually happiest with a small amount of choice. Having no choice at all is a bummer...but so is having too much choice. The class valedictorian who had her pick of jobs is less happy than the C student who was happy just to get a job. The beautiful charmer who had her pick of husbands is less happy than the plain Jane who had far fewer beaus. People who work for companies that offer 3 or 4 different funds to invest in are happier than those whose companies offer 20 or 30.

Why would this be so? Because too much choice is stressful. It becomes impossible to understand all the choices fully. And people will then blame themselves. They had their pick; if it didn't work out, it must be their fault. While the person who didn't have as many choices won't blame themselves.

[lawnchair]

Money doesn't buy you out of the crapped-out parts of our culture. You're still spending hours and hours breathing smog in traffic, even if you get to do it in a Benz. Mass-market entertainment is still crap, even if you watch it on a 80 inch HDTV. The right clothes might make you 'contacts', but hollow ones.

Only the very, very richest among the well-off aren't working well-over-40, commuting in hell, dealing with airports, eating miserable food, dodging drugged-out criminals, or buying stuff that isn't just a fancier brand name of Chinese crap.

[Byron100]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'M')oney doesn't buy happiness if you're surrounded by people wealthier than you.

Equality of opportunity, equal rights, etc. bring happiness.

But if people feel as though they can't move up in society, they will be unhappy.

Mind you, most of America's struggling middle class are considered wealthy by modern global standards and downright rich compared to historical examples.

In America, we are constantly exposed to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. This leads to a feeling of jealousy and inadequacy for those not in the top 1%.

Also, middle and upper middle class Americans never come into contact with the truly needy. They complain when they have to put in a few hours a week of overtime to pay the credit card bills...but have they ever gone to bed hungry? Have they ever been on the verge of homelessness? Have they had to eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and hamburger helper because they can't afford real food?

The irony is that as America has gotten wealthier, its citizens feel poorer.

The Great Depression felt horrible because Americans suddenly had to live with the horror of having the same standard of living as their parents generation.

If the economic does in fact enter another depression, we might be knocked down to 1997, 1987, or who knows, maybe even 1977.

[Tyler_JC]

You mean exactly what happened during the last depression?

There is going to be a big protectionist/socialist streak in this country during the next major economic downturn.



The stock market crash of 1929, the Depression, and the massive hikes in taxes on the rich lead to a far more economically equal society for the next 60 years.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f people feel deprived now, just wait until the average standard of living falls by 50% or more.

[sicophiliac]

I think as stated before here money buys you free time, as well as peace of mind. Considering were only on this earth for around 80 year give or take, one third of that sleep and arguably the first 5 years and the last say 5-10 years too dependent on others or physically limited to really enjoy things I would say that money can bring happiness. Lets say we have a good 70 years of life to enjoy, 40 of which is working years and thus 13-15 years of that would be spent working just to make ends meet. If you won the mega-millions jackpot and had 10s of millions in the bank you would never need to work again. Never have to worry about paying the mortgage, worry about health care, having good quality food or the well being of your close friends or family. I would take that any day over working 40-50 hours a week, worrying about my family's and my own financial security. Watching the years go by knowing I am not really getting the most out of life and so on. Especially with peak oil right around the corner the stresses of knowing hard times on their way make it even worse.

[gg3]

It's even simpler than that.

Emotional homeostasis.

Each person's brain is wired for various set-points in terms of neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and so on. Those set-points are very difficult to alter, as the long search for effective treatments for depression demonstrates.

The brain responds to differences in levels of stimuli, and tends to zero-out stimuli that are not varying.

And last but not least, there is the chimpanzee instinct to grasp at anything that's (literally) "shiny and new."

So what happens is:

If a person's basic needs are not being met, they'll be unhappy because they are in overt somatic distress: hungry, cold, etc.

Going from deprivation to sufficiency in basic needs (being fed, warm, clean, not in pain) makes a substantial difference in wellbeing, and provides the basis for the idea that, from poverty to working class, a change in income produces a change in happiness.

Once you're not in overt somatic distress, happiness tends to become subject to the various homeostatic set-points, punctuated by the occasional chimpanzee delight over something that's shiny & new.

The ultra-wealthy can afford to keep up the stream of shiny-and-new in their lives, but beyond a certain point, this also gets swept under the homeostatic tide and fails to make a difference.

If you were to plot a curve between income and happiness, it would look like an inverse exponential function, that rises rapidly from poverty to working class and then basically flattens down into a steady flat line that increases slightly as income increases from working class to super-wealthy.

---

As for the Newsweek item about the insanity of consumer behavior, that has been noted many times before. I have an article somewhere from a leading guy in the advertising business of the 1950s, saying in effect that consumption had to be boosted continually in order to keep the economy going, and that was the job of advertising.

Meanwhile, all this growthism is killing the planet.

[big_rc]

Everyone knows that money cannot buy happiness but money sure as hell can rent some !!

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', '
')Each person's brain is wired for various set-points in terms of neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and so on. Those set-points are very difficult to alter, as the long search for effective treatments for depression demonstrates.

The brain responds to differences in levels of stimuli, and tends to zero-out stimuli that are not varying.

And last but not least, there is the chimpanzee instinct to grasp at anything that's (literally) "shiny and new."

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sicophiliac', 'I')f you won the mega-millions jackpot and had 10s of millions in the bank you would never need to work again. Never have to worry about paying the mortgage, worry about health care, having good quality food or the well being of your close friends or family. I would take that any day over working 40-50 hours a week, worrying about my family's and my own financial security.

[Byron100]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '
')And yet...lottery winners are not particularly happy. Many are spectacularly unhappy, and wish they never won. There are therapy groups for lottery winners. Some even end up giving all the money away.

It's great not to have to worry about the mortgage, but that gets old fast. Once you take it for granted, it won't make you happy any more. As for the wellbeing of your family...you may have to worry more if you are rich, not less. That guy who won that huge megamillions jackpot a few years ago has lost his family because of it. His wife left him, because of the newspaper stories about his infidelity. (He was probably sleeping around anyway, but until he was mega-rich, nobody cared enough to write about it.) His granddaughter, who was going to be his heir, died of a drug overdose. He blames the lottery win; he had to move her to a new school because of the kidnapping threats, and she never adjusted, instead falling in a bad crowd. His house and car were repeatedly broken into.
..........

I think the worst thing is that you can never be sure your friends are really your friends, or if they are just sucking up to you because you're rich. Case in point: Michael Vick. He took big risks for his "friends"...and they ratted him out to save their own butts in a New York minute.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')icophiliac wrote:
If you won the mega-millions jackpot and had 10s of millions in the bank you would never need to work again. Never have to worry about paying the mortgage, worry about health care, having good quality food or the well being of your close friends or family. I would take that any day over working 40-50 hours a week, worrying about my family's and my own financial security.

[TheDude]

Anybody remember the early 80s book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System? Made quite an impression on me as a pre-teen, in particular the description of the Upper Upper Class as a bunch of bored dullards. I've been trying to dig out my copy for a couple of years now - where the hell...excellent and entertaining read as I recall.

[Cornelian]

I'm going to respond to this on a very personal level. I spent 15 years in abject poverty - keeping a roof over my head but only just. I had no appliances: as an example, I spent those 15 years washing clothes by hand. There was no spare money, no savings, no regular job, no car, no house.

Then I became wealthy-ish. Not super-rich, but wealthy. (I made a spectacularly risky business decision that paid out big time). I can tell you which state I prefer.

Am I happier? You bet. I now work for myself ... and I choose only to work about 8 months of the year, and only 4 days a week of that 8 months, and only 4 hours during those 4 days. I work from home (no more commuting, no more having to deal with appalling work places and stresses). I now own my own home, I am in control of my life far more than when I was poor, I am healthier, happier, living out my dream of eating my own-grown food and living more sustainably. My stress levels have gone way down. I can now live outside of the rat race because of the new wealth. I choose volunteer work to keep myself involved within the community (I am typing this response in the few minutes before I need to head off to my unpaid volunteer work for today). There is no way I would voluntarily choose to go back to being poor again.

Has money made me happier? Yes, yes and yes again. (I still don't have a car - why, having learned to live without one?)