The article seems to be omitting an important piece of data: Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?
It implies by its framing that they're less happy, but that's not actually supported by any actual data in the piece (though to be fair, on cursory googling I wasn't able to find any evidence one way or another).
> Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?
This has been studied comprehensively over the years, that the results seem very clear: there is an ideal income level in terms of happiness. If you earn below or above that, you're probably sacrificing happiness.
The ideal income level depends on cost of living, but on average, in the US, that income level seems to be a bit north of $100,000/yr.
I saw right around $200k in then current dollars around 1990ish, and you weren't sacrificing above that, on average, it's just that increasing income above that point had no further correlation with happiness/satisfaction measures.
$200k for a happier life, and more realistically $385k, make a lot more sense to me than the $70k that I saw floating around a few years ago.
The more you make, the better you can handle the 3 versions of yourself. The debt from the past, Food, clothes, shelter, and fun in the present, and savings for the future.
When I rented a cheap single bedroom and made 70k in the midwest I was living a "better life" than I do now making much more, saving much less due to a kid, house, safer (but modest) car, more insurance(s), etc.
Agreed. This is a glorified op-ed piece / human interest story. It's not proper objective journalism.
I mean, given all the complaints and struggles we read of at other class levels the headline could be: The Elite - Miserable and in Fear, Just Like the Rest of Us.
And it's fear that drives greed. I mean, when you can't go from $1M to $500K that's fear of losing what you have; just like the rest of us.
I think it goes like this: You make $X. You'd like more, you see there are things that you could do with more money, and so you're kind of unhappy. But you don't get your hopes up for those things, because you only make $X, and there's no point.
Now you make $(X + Y). Now some of those things become possible that you didn't dare let yourself dream about before. The problem is, you gained $Y in income, but the amount of things that became possible is 10 * $Y. You could do any one of the things that became possible, but you can't do all of them. So now they're realistic dreams, but you still can't do (most of) them.
For many people, this makes them less happy then they were, because the gap between dreams and reality got wider, even though they actually can do at least one thing more than they could before.
> Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?
This is already known though. Its a curve. People who live in poverty (local standards) are unhappy, and happiness increases a lot till they have more breathing space. I'm not sure what exactly is the magic border where this doesn't count anymore but say it is 60k a year (in USA, which is a bit odd because living expenses vary a lot but hear me out). After that ceiling, the happiness does not increase much anymore.
There is a link between money to happiness according to studies. The trick is that it stops after you have enough. Basically its terrible being poor, that will effect you happiness in a negative way. Once you have enough you are happier. But even more doesn't effect it that much.
True in general, but high stress is correlated with un-happiness, and can be objectively measured based on blood cortisol levels (at least for people with normal endocrine systems).
Good point, but obviously this would be difficult to gather for a large scale study of correlations between income and happiness. If someone's done it, I'd be curious to see the results.
It implies by its framing that they're less happy, but that's not actually supported by any actual data in the piece (though to be fair, on cursory googling I wasn't able to find any evidence one way or another).