Money does indeed buy happiness, and it increases with a bigger paycheque more than economists previously believed, a recent analysis has found.
No shit.
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global political instability is usually caused by global personal financial instability. who woulda thunk money buys happiness. dur.
And that not only people living paycheck to paycheck. I’m fairly well off, renting a decent flat for a good price. But fuck yeah would I move to a bigger and better place if I could afford it. Would love to have a balcony, less traffic outside, and space for a bigger gaming table.
It doesn’t buy poverty, either
Money buys options.
If you have more money, typically you have a greater pool of options to choose from in all avenues of life.
When your finances are desperate or non existent, so are your options.
I like my options 0dte
who’s “we,” bub
The people responsible for saying the age old idiom: money doesn’t buy happiness??? Feel like that was too easy to answer and I’m missing the real question.
Likely the poster is trying to pretend that they already knew this. But it’s more likely that they are confusing that they assumed it is true with knowing it.
Money doesn’t buy happiness but poverty sure buys unhappiness.
Duh, I’d rather be miserable with money than miserable with no money.
They must have a mouse in their pocket…who the fuck is we? Rich people?
Well, obviously - up to a certain degree at least.
If something breaks and needs to be replaced, having enough money to replace it without needing to then cut back on money used to buy food or whatever is great. Imagine for example your car broke down and you’d have to save months to be able to afford a repair.
But beyond being able to afford basic needs, good food and the likes (and also go out every now and then), I’d say having more money/income has diminishing returns.
I’m by no means rich, but I realized after a few paycheck raises when I was at a level where it didn’t bother me much when things needed to be replaced or where a small price increase for items at the supermarket didn’t concern me anymore, that then adding more money to that doesn’t really boost my emotional well-being by a lot anymore.
One area where I realize that from time to time is my computer. I upgrade some part of it at least once or twice a year. But I rarely upgrade/change anything about my computer because I’m unhappy about something, it’s mostly me falling for marketing and hype I suppose. I got a 3080 at launch day (for a relatively normal price of 799,-€ back then), and of course I thought it was a great card, but when I tested out some used GPUs I organized for family/friends during the pandemic I didn’t really mind. I checked out a GTX 1060 for a few days and I honestly didn’t even think about having downgraded to a 1060 from a 3080 after an hour or two. I obviously had to lower the graphics settings of most games, but they ran well enough and I enjoyed gaming as much as ever.
That being said, if my GPU was a 1060 today, I’d probably be a lot less happy compared to 2021, because quite a few modern titles are borderline unplayable with a 1060. But even today, I don’t think I’d enjoy gaming less with say a Radeon 6600 XT.
So, there’s a certain threshold that also depends a lot on what your hobbies actually are. Gaming is relatively cheap compared to I don’t know … racing cars on a race track. So if that’s one of your hobbies, your threshold might be higher than mine, if it’s drawing it might be lower etc.
The whole premise that ‘money can’t buy happiness’ is a tool for the ruling class to try and make the poors become content with their poverty and not try to do anything about the inequality.
It’s somewhat realistic. Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain come to mind. It’s also kinda shown with the number of people that come into money then fall out of it.
Kinda inverse to me. I think there’s a level of financial comfortability that reduces stress and anxiety. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but poor buys some very negative emotional responses.
It’s not realistic. The realistic phrase would be ‘excess does not buy happiness’.
Yes we have Anthony Bourdain and Robin Williams as counter examples, but it’s pretty shitty to use their mental health to support a classist tool designed to keep the lower classes quiet. Money doesn’t fix everything because not everything can be fixed, but it definitely does buy a lot of joy and opportunity to live and enjoy living.
I think I made it clear that I thought the situation was more complicated than either position makes it out to be. Having the means to be comfortable and secure matters a lot. After that, though, we have diminishing returns.
Well, just look at the World Happiness Report. Always dominated by European countries that also happen to be the world’s most equal countries. Financially and otherwise.
What was meant: The endless pursuit of money won’t bring you joy.
What we get told: Be happy you even get minimum wage serf.
Money buys security and stability. The whole “money doesn’t buy happiness” schtick is just something rich people tell poor people to keep them in line. Or so they think
In my experience it’s something poor people tell themselves and each other, to the same end.
Yep yep that too.
Money itself doesn’t bring happiness, though, it’s just one way of removing roadblocks to happiness.
A person suffering emotional distress and depression won’t suddenly be cured when handed a sack of money. Especially if the distress and depression isn’t financially motivated.
Our society is particularly monetarily motivated, so a lot of barriers in life are financial. But they are not all the barriers to happiness that exist.
This statement is only ever said by the truly rich.
At a point, more money can’t buy more happiness.
Guess what, economic stability and security buys quite a lot of happiness.
Hapiness is defined differently by different people. Some will be happy by buying trinkets or experiences. Some by having a happy family. Some by being remembered by others. Some by helping others in need. If you aren’t the person that wants to buy their hapiness, then no amount of money will help.
Then again, it helps a shitton in all of the above, up to a point.
I think it’s better said as “money enables happiness”. If you have enough money that your needs are met, then you are free to pursue whatever makes you happy.
Not everybody needs money for happiness though
No shit? Well next they’ll be telling us private healthcare maybe wasn’t the super best idea we’ve ever had and that good things are better than bad things! Truly preposterous!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A paper Kahneman co-authored with Matthew Killingsworth and Barbara Mellers in 2023 concluded that the 2010 research had overstated the plateau effect because it used an unreliable method of measuring happiness from a Gallup survey, which asked study subjects to recall if they smiled the previous day.
“Income might have this protective effect against experiencing certain negative emotions, but it doesn’t necessarily bring us joy on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
Back in 2017, Jessie Golem, a photographer and videographer from Hamilton, was working four precarious jobs, including one for a volunteer organization that she hoped would open some doors.
When Golem was enrolled in Ontario’s basic income pilot program, she was able to focus on her better-paying work as a freelance photographer, knowing her rent would be covered regardless of whether her invoices had been paid promptly.
She said it was satisfying to see her efforts on the business “turning into real-world money,” and it helped that she was no longer in a constant state of worry about what she’d do if the car or computer she uses for work broke down.
Eventually, Hu was part of a successful startup that significantly improved his circumstances and launched his lucrative career in software engineering.
The original article contains 1,242 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If this surprises you, you never had to worry about how you are going to pay next month’s rent
Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy your preferred form of misery.
I guess that sense of agency over our suffering is a kind of happiness.
