7 ms·

Wealth is not a terrible measure of good life. "Money does not bring happiness" is a trope that rich people would like poor people to believe. I don't think po

Wealth is not a terrible measure of good life. "Money does not bring happiness" is a trope that rich people would like poor people to believe. I don't think poor people fall for it, though.

hackyhacky 1mo ago
The more accurate version is "Money does not bring happiness, but poverty really sucks." A billionaire is not orders of magnitude happier than a millionaire. But a millionaire is much happier than someone who is worried about being able to pay rent, afford food, etc. Thus, the solution to maximize happiness is to distribute wealth evenly.
- phyzix5761 1mo ago
  I wouldn't say they're happier. They have other things they're stressed about. An undisciplined mind finds things to be dissatisfied with no matter what the financial situation of the individual. Billionaires have desires and aversions just like people living in poverty. Yes, those desires and aversions are about different things but its the mechanism of desire and aversion that causes unhappiness not the external situation.
  - hackyhacky 1mo ago
    > They have other things they're stressed about. Sorry, but I don't buy this. Equating stress about whether my company's stock price stays about $200 with stress about whether I will be able to afford a meal for my children is simply not on the same level. Billionaires may choose to be emotionally involved in their financial situation, but a person in poverty has no choice. A bit of mindful meditation will solve the former problem; only money can solve the latter.
    - bluGill 1mo ago
      I don't know about billionaires, but I do know couples who between the two are earning nearly a million dollars per year - yet because their spending has grown to match their income they are stressed about having enough food to eat the last few days of every month - even worse than poor people I know who have almost nothing. Sure they both are driving new cars, living in a large house (near mansion?), their kids are getting music lessons and many other things that make their life much better than the poor families, but at the end of the month they are out of money and stressed about it. This isn't stress about their stock value (I haven't asked but I suspect they are maxing out their 401k and so have a nice amount in stocks that they can't touch), it is about enough food to eat today. The stress is exactly the same despite a much richer life.
      - hackyhacky 1mo ago
        I don't understand the point of your comment. Am I supposed to feel sorry for the irresponsible upper middle class who spent themselves into debt? Do you think that equates at all to actually poverty?
        bluGill 1mo ago
        No. You are supposed to understand them, and why despite having so much more wealth they often really do feel like they are in real poverty. I don't have sympathy for them either. I'm working hard enough to make my own [slightly] more modest life balance and wishing I had some of the toys they do, but I can't afford.
        hackyhacky 1mo ago
        > why despite having so much more wealth they often really do feel like they are in real poverty. Why are you so concerned about the feelings of the rich who choose feel stress despite suffering little to no actual risk to their lifestyle, and so unconcerned about the poor, who suffer very real material risks?
        phyzix5761 1mo ago
        You're trying to villainize people just because of their net worth. They're human just like everybody else and as such they have desires and aversions which lead them to stress and suffering like everyone else. Like the commenter you're replying to I know people who live in poverty who are very happy and lead fulfilling lives. I also know people who are millionaires who are constantly stressed for multiple reasons; including financial and non-financial reasons.
        hackyhacky 1mo ago
        > they have desires and aversions which lead them to stress and suffering like everyone else. That's the point: they don't stress "like everyone else." Stressing over whether you'll be able to afford your fifth home is not the same as stressing over whether you're going to lose your only home. When you're rich, stress is a lifestyle choice. Some people thrive on that kind of pressure. But the actual, real-world risks between the rich and the poor are not comparable.
- a34729t 1mo ago
  I agree: Re happiness is greatly increased by not having stress of worrying about paying bills. Re wealth distribution, that works for a generation or two maybe, but you do need people to actually work eventually. Otherwise you get the Europe situation where everybody wants benefits, 6 weeks of vacation and a 30 hour work week. That's great, but when China and the US are slobbering to take over every industry (or obsolete them, or reinvent them), what are you going to do? My preference would be better services, and driving the cost of basic goods down to zero.
  - CPLX 1mo ago
    > Otherwise you get the Europe situation I love when people use this as an argument. As far as I can tell “the Europe situation” is the most successful model for social and economic governance the world has produced so far.
    - bluGill 1mo ago
      That is a matter for debate. Europe generally doesn't have a bad life. However depending on what you personally value you might find it could be better. Would you be willing to compromise the lower work hours for more money - that might be the better choice for some people.
      - CPLX 1mo ago
        Well, of course. But I think any list of well-run countries, societies, and so on that doesn't have places like Scandinavia and Switzerland tied for first is a little bit confused.
    - a34729t 1mo ago
      How long will it last though?
- whall6 1mo ago
  Unless there is a moral hazard to distributing wealth evenly!
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  The even more accurate version is "happiness is correlated to the log power of wealth". You need increasingly more wealth to increase happiness. An even distribution maximizes happiness because of diminishing returns.
- ElevenLathe 1mo ago
  This is called "marginal utility of money" and is IMO the reason wealth redistribution is at minimum rational to the point that it doesn't disincentize needed growth. In this light (and this is obviously a gross simplification that doesn't even begin to capture reality) the main disagreement across the spectrum from communists to anarcho-capitalists is really: where is that point? and how much growth is needed? AnCaps say any redistribution is too much, communists would like no inequality gap at all. Presumably the pareto value is in the middle somewhere and changes constantly based on charging preferences, technology, and a trillion other variables. This of course treats the whole issue in a very technocratic, whiggish way whereas the real disagreements between these groups is not like that at all.
- jandrewrogers 1mo ago
  I would much rather optimize for life satisfaction than happiness. If happiness is only weakly correlated with economics then it is poor policy to use economics as a lever to increase happiness. Life satisfaction, on the other hand, is correlated with economic opportunity. It is also more durable than happiness.
- Xirdus 1mo ago
  Kind reminder that in 2026 USA, a millionaire is somebody who paid off their house mortgage and has 12 months of salary in savings but not much else.
tensor 1mo ago
Wealth is objectively a poor measure of a good life, past a threshold. Scientific studies have shown that yes, up to a level of wealth (e.g. being able to not worry about food, shelter, and future security), improving wealth improves happiness. After that, reported levels of happiness do not really change with wealth.
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  And better studies later have shown that the threshold is just the knee in a log curve. Happiness improves with wealth on a logarithmic scale.
  - BizarroLand 1mo ago
    There's a dramatic difference in having the kind of money that allows you to look forward to retirement and having the kind of money that allows you to alleviate the boredom of you and your closest 5 friends by taking a 6 week retreat to Bali.
    - prewett 1mo ago
      A six week retreat to Bali might alleviate the surface boredom, but it will just self-medicate the emptiness that causes the boredom, though.
  - tensor 1mo ago
    After the knee wealth is not the major factor in happiness, other factors take over like friends, relationships, weak tie relationships, etc etc etc. If you want to be happy optimizing for wealth only makes sense under the knee. After that, it's other factors, and extreme wealth may even harm those due to inequality.
- lotsofpulp 1mo ago
  >up to a level of wealth (e.g. being able to not worry about food, shelter, and future security), Assuming future security means affording cutting edge healthcare, this puts you in the 95th, if not the 99th, percentile of the world.
CPLX 1mo ago
Money does not fix all unhappiness but lack of money guarantees it.
the_gastropod 1mo ago
Which is why these rich people also spend so extravagantly on advertisements to encourage us to buy shit, too, right? Not like the rich get richer by convincing us we too could be rich if we work more and buy things from them right? No. Living simply is the cornerstone of many philosophies and religions going back thousands of years. Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Epicureanism, Stoicism are all pretty aligned on this broad “money does not bring happiness” theme. I tend to think there is wisdom here. You’re not going to win the game of monopoly against the people who already own all the real estate. You win by choosing to play a different game.
prewett 1mo ago
Money buys convenience and comfort, but it does not buy friendship, belonging, love, virtue, or purpose. The latter have usually been seen as more essential to the good life. You can look at the wealthy and get a sense of this. A lot of the artistic output of the 1920s was from rich people who had realized this: "Catcher in the Rye" is about a rich kid who finds life meaningless, and "The Great Gatsby" kills himself when he can't get love. (I think a lot of the current malaise comes from the rich people ["elites"] of that era discovering their meaningless existence--hence Postmodernism, and the rest of us buying into their assessment.) Trust-fund kids are known to go off the rails. The English upper class had a purposelessness (see Dorothy Sayers' main character of her mysteries, a the guy that Jeeves' serves; both again from the same period). In our own day, Elon Musk seems like a guy who is running around like mad, subconsciously covering the emptiness inside. Or our own culture, which is the wealthiest in the history of the world, yet we have rampant ADHD, depression, anxiety, and widespread drug abuse (I see more marijuana dispenseries than liquor stores--we cannot even relax without drugs).

Wealth is not a terrible measure of good life. "Money does not bring happiness" is a trope that rich people would like poor people to believe. I don't think poor people fall for it, though.

hackyhacky 1mo ago

The more accurate version is "Money does not bring happiness, but poverty really sucks." A billionaire is not orders of magnitude happier than a millionaire. But a millionaire is much happier than someone who is worried about being able to pay rent, afford food, etc. Thus, the solution to maximize happiness is to distribute wealth evenly.

phyzix5761 1mo ago
I wouldn't say they're happier. They have other things they're stressed about. An undisciplined mind finds things to be dissatisfied with no matter what the financial situation of the individual. Billionaires have desires and aversions just like people living in poverty. Yes, those desires and aversions are about different things but its the mechanism of desire and aversion that causes unhappiness not the external situation.
- hackyhacky 1mo ago
  > They have other things they're stressed about. Sorry, but I don't buy this. Equating stress about whether my company's stock price stays about $200 with stress about whether I will be able to afford a meal for my children is simply not on the same level. Billionaires may choose to be emotionally involved in their financial situation, but a person in poverty has no choice. A bit of mindful meditation will solve the former problem; only money can solve the latter.
  - bluGill 1mo ago
    I don't know about billionaires, but I do know couples who between the two are earning nearly a million dollars per year - yet because their spending has grown to match their income they are stressed about having enough food to eat the last few days of every month - even worse than poor people I know who have almost nothing. Sure they both are driving new cars, living in a large house (near mansion?), their kids are getting music lessons and many other things that make their life much better than the poor families, but at the end of the month they are out of money and stressed about it. This isn't stress about their stock value (I haven't asked but I suspect they are maxing out their 401k and so have a nice amount in stocks that they can't touch), it is about enough food to eat today. The stress is exactly the same despite a much richer life.
    - hackyhacky 1mo ago
      I don't understand the point of your comment. Am I supposed to feel sorry for the irresponsible upper middle class who spent themselves into debt? Do you think that equates at all to actually poverty?
      - bluGill 1mo ago
        No. You are supposed to understand them, and why despite having so much more wealth they often really do feel like they are in real poverty. I don't have sympathy for them either. I'm working hard enough to make my own [slightly] more modest life balance and wishing I had some of the toys they do, but I can't afford.
        hackyhacky 1mo ago
        > why despite having so much more wealth they often really do feel like they are in real poverty. Why are you so concerned about the feelings of the rich who choose feel stress despite suffering little to no actual risk to their lifestyle, and so unconcerned about the poor, who suffer very real material risks?
      - phyzix5761 1mo ago
        You're trying to villainize people just because of their net worth. They're human just like everybody else and as such they have desires and aversions which lead them to stress and suffering like everyone else. Like the commenter you're replying to I know people who live in poverty who are very happy and lead fulfilling lives. I also know people who are millionaires who are constantly stressed for multiple reasons; including financial and non-financial reasons.
        hackyhacky 1mo ago
        > they have desires and aversions which lead them to stress and suffering like everyone else. That's the point: they don't stress "like everyone else." Stressing over whether you'll be able to afford your fifth home is not the same as stressing over whether you're going to lose your only home. When you're rich, stress is a lifestyle choice. Some people thrive on that kind of pressure. But the actual, real-world risks between the rich and the poor are not comparable.
a34729t 1mo ago
I agree: Re happiness is greatly increased by not having stress of worrying about paying bills. Re wealth distribution, that works for a generation or two maybe, but you do need people to actually work eventually. Otherwise you get the Europe situation where everybody wants benefits, 6 weeks of vacation and a 30 hour work week. That's great, but when China and the US are slobbering to take over every industry (or obsolete them, or reinvent them), what are you going to do? My preference would be better services, and driving the cost of basic goods down to zero.
- CPLX 1mo ago
  > Otherwise you get the Europe situation I love when people use this as an argument. As far as I can tell “the Europe situation” is the most successful model for social and economic governance the world has produced so far.
  - bluGill 1mo ago
    That is a matter for debate. Europe generally doesn't have a bad life. However depending on what you personally value you might find it could be better. Would you be willing to compromise the lower work hours for more money - that might be the better choice for some people.
    - CPLX 1mo ago
      Well, of course. But I think any list of well-run countries, societies, and so on that doesn't have places like Scandinavia and Switzerland tied for first is a little bit confused.
  - a34729t 1mo ago
    How long will it last though?
whall6 1mo ago
Unless there is a moral hazard to distributing wealth evenly!
bryanlarsen 1mo ago
The even more accurate version is "happiness is correlated to the log power of wealth". You need increasingly more wealth to increase happiness. An even distribution maximizes happiness because of diminishing returns.
ElevenLathe 1mo ago
This is called "marginal utility of money" and is IMO the reason wealth redistribution is at minimum rational to the point that it doesn't disincentize needed growth. In this light (and this is obviously a gross simplification that doesn't even begin to capture reality) the main disagreement across the spectrum from communists to anarcho-capitalists is really: where is that point? and how much growth is needed? AnCaps say any redistribution is too much, communists would like no inequality gap at all. Presumably the pareto value is in the middle somewhere and changes constantly based on charging preferences, technology, and a trillion other variables. This of course treats the whole issue in a very technocratic, whiggish way whereas the real disagreements between these groups is not like that at all.
jandrewrogers 1mo ago
I would much rather optimize for life satisfaction than happiness. If happiness is only weakly correlated with economics then it is poor policy to use economics as a lever to increase happiness. Life satisfaction, on the other hand, is correlated with economic opportunity. It is also more durable than happiness.
Xirdus 1mo ago
Kind reminder that in 2026 USA, a millionaire is somebody who paid off their house mortgage and has 12 months of salary in savings but not much else.

tensor 1mo ago

Wealth is objectively a poor measure of a good life, past a threshold. Scientific studies have shown that yes, up to a level of wealth (e.g. being able to not worry about food, shelter, and future security), improving wealth improves happiness. After that, reported levels of happiness do not really change with wealth.

bryanlarsen 1mo ago
And better studies later have shown that the threshold is just the knee in a log curve. Happiness improves with wealth on a logarithmic scale.
- BizarroLand 1mo ago
  There's a dramatic difference in having the kind of money that allows you to look forward to retirement and having the kind of money that allows you to alleviate the boredom of you and your closest 5 friends by taking a 6 week retreat to Bali.
  - prewett 1mo ago
    A six week retreat to Bali might alleviate the surface boredom, but it will just self-medicate the emptiness that causes the boredom, though.
- tensor 1mo ago
  After the knee wealth is not the major factor in happiness, other factors take over like friends, relationships, weak tie relationships, etc etc etc. If you want to be happy optimizing for wealth only makes sense under the knee. After that, it's other factors, and extreme wealth may even harm those due to inequality.
lotsofpulp 1mo ago
>up to a level of wealth (e.g. being able to not worry about food, shelter, and future security), Assuming future security means affording cutting edge healthcare, this puts you in the 95th, if not the 99th, percentile of the world.

CPLX 1mo ago

Money does not fix all unhappiness but lack of money guarantees it.

the_gastropod 1mo ago

Which is why these rich people also spend so extravagantly on advertisements to encourage us to buy shit, too, right? Not like the rich get richer by convincing us we too could be rich if we work more and buy things from them right? No. Living simply is the cornerstone of many philosophies and religions going back thousands of years. Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Epicureanism, Stoicism are all pretty aligned on this broad “money does not bring happiness” theme. I tend to think there is wisdom here. You’re not going to win the game of monopoly against the people who already own all the real estate. You win by choosing to play a different game.

prewett 1mo ago

Money buys convenience and comfort, but it does not buy friendship, belonging, love, virtue, or purpose. The latter have usually been seen as more essential to the good life. You can look at the wealthy and get a sense of this. A lot of the artistic output of the 1920s was from rich people who had realized this: "Catcher in the Rye" is about a rich kid who finds life meaningless, and "The Great Gatsby" kills himself when he can't get love. (I think a lot of the current malaise comes from the rich people ["elites"] of that era discovering their meaningless existence--hence Postmodernism, and the rest of us buying into their assessment.) Trust-fund kids are known to go off the rails. The English upper class had a purposelessness (see Dorothy Sayers' main character of her mysteries, a the guy that Jeeves' serves; both again from the same period). In our own day, Elon Musk seems like a guy who is running around like mad, subconsciously covering the emptiness inside. Or our own culture, which is the wealthiest in the history of the world, yet we have rampant ADHD, depression, anxiety, and widespread drug abuse (I see more marijuana dispenseries than liquor stores--we cannot even relax without drugs).