The Price of Happiness (2024)

https://happiness-science.org/price-of-happiness/

by andyjohnson0 • 1 day ago

88 48 1 day ago

Harvard has been running longitudinal studies for several decades:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study

and their findings lean towards good relationships with family and friends are highly correlation with happiness, health, and many aspects of financial success. The released a book summarizing many results a few years ago:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61273746-the-good-life

* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...

gib444• 1 day ago

and their findings lean towards good relationships with family and friends are highly correlation with happiness, health, and many aspects of financial success

The daily reminder about the pains of autism and depression :/

asdfman1234• 1 day ago

I read a great quote by someone, maybe Nietzsche, suggesting that when you encounter that which you struggle with you tell yourself the equivalent of "hell yeah, this is my struggle."

This is prime time. This is what I'm currently on earth to solve. I'm going to enjoy the process of trying to defeat it. Amor fati.

Of course, you don't have to think that way. But you're going to have one problem or another, either way, and that mindset shift just makes everything feel less hopeless and more in control, even if the problem persists for now.

sokka_h2otribe• 19 hours ago

If you can, consider to volunteer at a shelter or any volunteer activity that you find accessible to you.

I say this specifically because giving to others is undervalued for its internal benefits, and animals tend to be more accessible to direct love towards than humans with their complexities. But overall just giving is a way of transferring some of yourself into a more together context, and volunteering tends to be socially easier than like hanging at a bar or something...idk, just another autistic person who has/does struggle with depression in many contexts.

Volunteer at a cat shelter for e.g was only a tiny part of my burn out recovery process but it was still a really important catalyst and component. Maybe you can have some similar experiences too! Or maybe your own experiences are very different and it's not valuable for you, I'm sorry.

If you want I can ramble more about structural reasons for why this is a very good idea for autism+depression, but the point is really 'one extremely small and accessible suggestion' and so I don't want to overcomplicate it more.

Anyway if animals can't work for you, any other volunteering and/or metta/ loving-kindness meditation would be my second recommendations.

But it's really important for the volunteering bits that you are not maximizing efficiency. It is certainly 10X more impact if I was to work$ and donate that to the cat shelter. But in terms of the thematic healing goal, it is more important I spend time scooping poop for the cat gods at the shelter almost precisely because it's not a utility-value driven experience. Giving unto others, etc.

throw0101d5• 7 hours ago

and depression :/

Regularly recommended on HN by folks:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46674.Feeling_Good

there's also a follow-up:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54930681-feeling-great

laylower• 12 hours ago

""The Grant Study is an 87-year continuing longitudinal study from the Study of Adult Development at Harvard Medical School, started in 1938.[2] It has followed 268 Harvard-educated men, the majority of whom were members of the undergraduate classes of 1942, 1943 and 1944.""

So they took the cream of the crop in the US and tracked it for 80 years. Most of these people will never starve or have to choose a tier 3 education for their children. It's useful as a study, but mostly to demonstrate what matters for the affluent / well-off for their happiness.

throw0101d5• 7 hours ago

So they took the cream of the crop in the US and tracked it for 80 years. Most of these people will never starve or have to choose a tier 3 education for their children. It's useful as a study, but mostly to demonstrate what matters for the affluent / well-off for their happiness.

1. Their (alleged) affluence was no guarantee of success or happiness.

2. There was a second study (with the two later merging) that followed boys from the rougher part(s) of town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glueck_Study

The referenced book looks at both cohorts.

bryanlarsen2• 8 hours ago

good relationships with family and friends are highly correlation with happiness,

And disputes over money are the most common way to break up a family. Probably friends too.

3pm2• 1 day ago

What is the shape of the relationship between money and happiness, and what are its implications?

1. money != income.

2. Zip codes.

3. Age.

4. Social class.

a) 65 year old professor living in Woodside, CA, with a net worth of $250,000K

b) 35 year old HVAC business owner living in Fresno, CA, with a net worth of $2,000,000

First is poor, second is rich, but the study conflates both into the same bucket if they both make, say, $400K/yr

toast0• 1 day ago

but the study conflates both into the same bucket if they both make, say, $400K/yr

Annual income is easy to measure, net worth isn't. People like to measure things that are easier to measure. :P This is part of how 'millionaire' has gone from 'someone who has a million dollars' (for some value of has) to 'someone who has a million dollars of income per year'

3pm2• 23 hours ago

I guess annual income also hints at annual expenses which should be important for the study. There are people who constantly spend all they make, and probably score low on self assessed happiness. Also income != wage, can be passive.

I think for a study like this, a money-happiness correlation would need a more sophisticated definition of money, to account for peer pressure and spending.

For a given zip code - take p75 of pre-tax income, multiply by 50% - this would be a proxy of how much someone needs to spend per year to be comfortable with local cost of living and their peers. 50% takes taxes and savings out, call it spend/burn. Then someone's wealth could be a ratio of net-worth/burn. The higher the wealthier - people 25 and over essentially not needing to work, and people with < 3 are essentially in indentured servitude, even with high income. Control for age.

billfor• 1 day ago

Was this AI written? It seems confusing to me but I'm not an economist. I think another way to look at happiness and money is that while money doesn't necessarily buy happiness, it avoids unhappiness. So you remove a negative factor -- not having money, which is a position nobody wants to be in. This is similar to your overall health, friends, love, etc.. It's not that you need tons of them , but not having any of them is a problem, especially health.

"When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death."

marcuskaz• 1 day ago

Every Thursday, the ice cream man comes down our street. The price is usually around ~$20 to buy happiness for a family of 4.

asdfman1234• 1 day ago

Hi, effective altruist here. I'm going to start a fund to buy your family $50,000 of ice cream a year to maximize total happiness.

bryanlarsen2• 1 day ago

derbOac• 1 day ago

I wonder how much any of those associations are with income per se versus career satisfaction per se?

I imagine people who are making more money are probably a better fit for their career, feel more needed, and so forth and so on. I do imagine there's some relationship with income and accumulating more money per se, but I wonder how strong that relationship is once you remove the effects of career satisfaction independent of monetary gain, if such a thing is even possible.

I guess it's hard for me to interpret these effects because there's so much going on in the background in terms of meeting life goals, feeling welcome where you're at and feeling like you're able to contribute what you're best at, and so forth and so on.

The other thing is the ordinate axis is hard for me to make sense of. Like, in Figure 1, life satisfaction goes from say, 2.7 to 3.2 on a scale of 1 to 4? That seems like a relatively narrow range to me, even if it is statistically significant, and my guess is those dots are hiding a lot of variability.

So maybe that's what people mean by diminishing returns? Not that there's no actual continuing increase, but that the increase is incredibly small on some absolute scale of happiness? It's hard to know what to make of the happiness numbers — if, say, consequential changes in some measure of happiness occur far below anything on that ordinate axis, none of these increases with income are of any practical significance.

m3kw9• 1 day ago

Sometimes is a miscalculation why people are not happy with what they have, mostly because they see another bigger number.

hankbond2• 1 day ago

This may be a very tone deaf thing to say, but what really helps me is to just tell myself I am happy. It's certainly not fool-proof when faced with genuine problems, but I often find myself unhappy or annoyed for no particular reason. In those moments I just tell myself I have everything I need and life is great, and then it just feels better.

That said all the findings that these studies seem to gravitate towards like close relationships also align with my experiences as being powerful effectors.

skeeter2020• 22 hours ago

that doesn't feel tone deaf to me, and is a legit strategy to kick-start deeper happiness and satisfaction. I a huge component of money-related unhappiness to me appears to be context, i.e. people who need more.

hankbond2• 22 hours ago

I feel like it's directionally like telling depressed people to just "stop being depressed". Works for me because of where I'm at currently but idk how generalizable it is.

biscuits1• 1 day ago

Money provides freedom, not happiness.

jongjong3• 24 hours ago

For most people, freedom is the only missing piece holding them back from being happy so that distinction melts away for them.

AnimalMuppet• 24 hours ago

Freedom is the only missing piece holding them back from pursuing what they think will make them happy. That freedom makes them happy today, happy with the hope of tomorrow's happiness. But a number of people find that pursuing that thing (whatever it is for them) doesn't actually make them happy. Now they're less happy, because not only are they not happy, but their dream of future happiness has also died.

OkayPhysicist• 23 hours ago

If you're free, you're free to pursue happiness.

EvanAnderson• 23 hours ago

Money makes so many things easier. How leverage that ease determines if it brings you happiness.

yboris2• 1 day ago

A classic paper worth a read:

If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right

by Elizabeth Dunn, Daniel Gilbert, & Timothy D. Wilson

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10577...

Includes explicit recommendations (even in the short abstract)!

throw0101d5• 1 day ago

Books on happiness (research) have become a bit of a thing in recent years, but Dunn seems to have published one of the earlier ones in 2013:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803098-happy-money

I'd also recommend Morgan Housel's various writings:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231148075-the-art-of-spe...

He had an interesting observation: the popular saying "don't spend money on things, but on experiences" only goes so far. Spending on things can bring about experiences: the big house/cabin/cottage per se may not bring you happiness, but if it's a place that you can gather family and friends, that can bring happiness/meaning. His first car didn't bring him happiness because it was a car (and not even fancy), but because of all the road trips he did with his friends in it.

MattSayar• 1 day ago

I just finished reading this book while taking a train for a weekend vacation. To your point, he mentions that if spending money doesn't make you happy, it's because you're spending it on the wrong things. You shouldn't spend money to get the respect of others, because it's fleeting, causes envy, and is the fast food of getting respect. You need to spend money in ways that give you new experiences until you discover what kind of spending DOES make you happy.

yboris2• 9 hours ago

I'm a huge fan of Positive Psychology and have read dozens of books (by Ph.D researchers of the subject).

My favorite academic summary is The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being by Michael A. Bishop. As a hyper-short summary: psychologists studying well being have used different definitions and approaches, yet what unifies them is positive feedback loops - behaviors and activities that beget more positive affect in the future. Think spending time with good friends, etc.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22897962-the-good-life

A classic read is Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It shows how humans are systematically bad at predicting to what extent future events will make them happier or sad. His TED talk is a nice 20 minute summary of the book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56627.Stumbling_on_Happi...

zaat• 22 hours ago

Reading the paper I have a repeating puzzlement, wondering if they are trolling or sincere. For example, about the benefits of delaying consumption to happiness: ... For example, when asked to choose a snack from an array that included apples, bananas, paprika-flavored crisps, and Snickers bars, people overwhelmingly selected an unhealthy snack if it was to be consumed immediately, but drifted toward the healthier options when selecting a snack to be consumed the following week (Read & van Leeuwen, 1998). Because the present seems to be viewed under an emotional magnifying glass, people gave in to the temptation of salty, sweet satiation when it was immediately available, but when such satiation receded into the future, this temptation no longer loomed large, freeing people to select more virtuous options—and perhaps to appreciate the abstract health benefits of a banana at least as much as the more concrete deliciousness of nutty, chocolaty nougat. ...

I would say that delaying the pleasure in this case distances the pleasure anticipation from the decision, just like deciding to start going to the gym next week is much easier decision to do then deciding to start right now. Appreciation of the health benefits of next week's banana combined with the lesser, mediocre pleasure that will be felt eating it, might be better for the individual health then having that Savoy truffle right now, but no, the banana will never bring the same pleasure or happiness. Never.

(link to the full version easily found in google: https://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1-s2-0-...)

DaveZale• 1 day ago

Great analysis, but I would probably add that most (but not all) of those who end up with the six- and seven- figure salaries are smarter, more well-connected and socially adjusted, optimistic etc. Most _not_ all. And some are just really good bullshitters, of course.

Ever been to a third world country and seen happy people who make just a couple hundred bucks a month, yet are very healthy and happy? I have. It's very life changing.

Who are the historical figures that you revere the most? Did their positive influences upon your life originate from making and having money?

tonyedgecombe• 17 hours ago

Having a couple of hundred bucks a month is fine when everybody around you has the same. It's hard to ignore when people around you have ten or a hundred times as much as you, especially when they start to shape society around themselves.

t0mpr1c32• 15 hours ago

To those that have, is given. Everywhere and always.

The biggest delusion of Americans is that they worked hard for everything they have.

It is characteristic of Americans to think poor people are undeserving.

didgetmaster• 23 hours ago

It is difficult to know when you 'have enough' money because like death, you never know what is around the corner. Most of us earn, save, and spend money during our working lives so that we can retire comfortably; but it seems like there is no magic number for when we have arrived.

How long will we live? What will our health be like? Would we like to travel? Leave the kids an inheritance? Give it away? All of these can influence the number.

The secret to amassing wealth is to always live beneath your means; but don't forget to enjoy yourself as you make the journey towards retirement.

socalgal2• 23 hours ago

Lots of people enjoy what they do. There's no reason any of the billionares HN complains about couldn't go retire but they don't. Most of them are busy AF. Because they want to be as clearly they have the funds to stop

woopah• 22 hours ago

As always, correlation is not causation, so it's very possible that the people who tend to be happier also tend to maybe fit into society better and thus get higher paying jobs, not that you necessarily need to make X/year to be happier.

It is still interesting to see how the actual numbers shake out though, especially the section on how the income quintile groups actually scale linearly instead of log linearly with reported happiness.

jongjong3• 21 hours ago

Money definitely buys happiness for me. But I resent the amount of competition and how much bs I have to put up with to get it. It's definitely eroding the happiness. Especially when you engage in all the bs for years and still don't get much more money.

thelastgallon• 21 hours ago

People work hard for academic and career success. This will take decades. The plan is to make a lot of money with that success, have costly things/hobbies and derive happiness. It is driven by money as social status, which allows you to buy costly things and signal to others about your success.

Instead, find joy in cheap hobbies and ignore the status markers. Just do things for yourself, not for others.

intellix• 21 hours ago

I think as long as you're not depressed because you don't have enough money I've seen people with much much less happier than extremely wealthy people.

I know someone extremely wealthy and he continuously says that he's bored, is depressed yet wants to make more.

Meanwhile I work daily with people on a normal/content wage and I feel like they're generally happier people?

I know people really struggling financially and they're constantly depressed.

Nevermark2• 18 hours ago

a linear association between happiness and Log(income) implies that the marginal utility of additional dollars diminishes exponentially, though never mathematically plateaus

And income (or wealth increase) can go up exponentially with wealth, so hitting the point where wealth just grows = linear increases in happiness relative to time?

zackmorris• 4 hours ago

I've held the notion that money behaves in a log-linear way for decades, so it's nice to see that formalized finally. A river exhibits different behavior than a lake or the ocean. It's interesting that Daniel Bernoulli (famous for the Bernoulli effect) had a similar instinct in 1738. Compared to the talking heads in news and politics today, he was an intellectual giant to say the least.

I did a deep dive on finding how well tax brackets correlate with a log-based tax rate, but couldn't find much. I'll just summarize the results of my AI-assisted research:

---

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/ta...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1iri8nf/tax_b...

By plotting the 2026 single filer tax bracket thresholds against their marginal rates, we can fit them to the classic logarithmic function:

  log-linear equation for slope of line (y = m * x + b):
  tax rate = m * ln(income) + b

The ideal fit yields the parameters m = 0.0672 and b = -0.5121. The table below outlines how closely the mathematical log formula predicts actual statutory tax rates:

  income    tax rate  ln() tax rate  deviation
  $12,400   12%       12.10%         +0.10%
  $50,400   22%       21.52%         -0.48%
  $105,700  24%       26.50%         +2.50%
  $201,775  32%       30.84%         -1.16%
  $256,225  35%       32.44%         -2.56%
  $640,600  37%       38.60%         +1.60%

US federal tax brackets match a base-e natural logarithm (ln) model surprisingly well, boasting a statistical correlation R^2 of approximately 0.962.

---

The general public might have a hard time understanding logarithms, so I investigated using base 2, base 10 and base e (ln) to explain them (the base doesn't affect the computed tax rate). Here are the two simplest rules of thumb for a log-based tax system:

  a) base 2 log: every time your income doubles, you pay 4.7% higher taxes on the total
  b) base 10 log: every time you add a 0 to the end of your income, you pay 15.5% higher taxes on the total

  income          tax rate  taxes paid    approximation

  a) base 2 log:
  $8,192          9.37%     $768          ~10%
  $16,384         14.03%    $2,299        ~15%
  $32,768         18.69%    $6,124        ~20%
  $65,536         23.35%    $15,303       ~25%
  $131,072        28.01%    $36,713       ~30%
  $262,144        32.67%    $85,642       ~35%
  $524,288        37.33%    $195,717      ~37% (current top marginal tax rate capped above this point)
  $1,048,576      41.99%    $440,297      ~40% vs 37%
  $2,097,152      46.65%    $978,321      ~45% vs 37%
  $4,194,304      51.31%    $2,152,097    ~50% vs 37%
  $8,388,608      55.97%    $4,695,104    ~55% vs 37%
  $16,777,216     60.63%    $10,172,026   ~60% vs 37%
  $33,554,432     65.29%    $21,907,689   ~65% vs 37%
  $67,108,864     69.95%    $46,942,650   ~70% vs 37%
  $134,217,728    74.61%    $100,139,847  ~75% vs 37%
  $268,435,456    79.27%    $212,788,786  ~80% vs 37%
  $536,870,912    83.93%    $450,595,756  ~85% vs 37%
  $1,073,741,824  88.59%    $951,227,882  ~90% vs 37%

  b) base 10 log:
  $10,000         10.66%    $1,066        ~10%
  $100,000        26.12%    $26,120       ~25%
  $1,000,000      41.59%    $415,900      ~40% retains current millionaire tax rate near 37%
  $10,000,000     57.06%    $5,706,000    ~50% at mid-millions vs 37%
  $100,000,000    72.52%    $72,520,000   ~75% at $100 million vs 37%
  $1,000,000,000  87.99%    $879,900,000  ~90% at $1 billion vs 37%

  From those tables, it's easy to see how a log-linear flat tax rate would work:

  a) base 2 log:
  4.7% flat tax: tax rate = 4.7% * (number of doublings) - 50%

  b) base 10 log:
  15.5% flat tax: tax rate = 15.5% * (number of zeros) - 50%

  c) base e log (for completeness):
  6.7% flat tax: tax rate = 6.7% * (number of zeros) - 50%

Politicians would set the log-linear tax rate slope (the 4.7%, 15.5% or 6.7% depending on log base) and the tax rate base (50% which might vary between perhaps 45-55%).

After grokking this, we might ask why a non-logarithmic 10% flat tax wouldn't work? The answer is subtle, but it's because it wouldn't incorporate the increased buying power over expenses ratio of higher incomes, so the formula would become tax rate = 0 * (number of zeros) + 10%, making it a regressive tax that penalizes low incomes and lowers taxes on high incomes that don't need the help.

To demonstrate why a 10% flat tax would be regressive, lets calculate the log-linear tax rate that meets the current $2 trillion US tax income:

  tax rate = m * ln(income) + b

  calculation of m for ln(income) derived from current values:

  m = (T - (b * AGI)) / (AGI * ln(u))

  m = log-linear slope to solve for
  T = total US tax revenue (currently about $2 trillion)
  b = -50% (floor held constant as a starting point)
  AGI = annual gross income of US (currently about $15 trillion)
  u = center of mass income of all taxpayers with half of tax revenues above and below (currently about $250,000)

  m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * ln(250000)) = 0.05096 ~= 5%

  calculation of m for base 2 log and base 10 log for completeness:

  a) base 2 log:
  m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * log2(250000)) = 0.03532 ~= 3.5%

  b) base 10 log:
  m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * log10(250000)) = 0.11733 ~= 12%

Lets see if the calculated m slope would lower taxes:

  final tax rates to meet $2 trillion in tax revenue using base 10 log-linear tax at m = 12%:

  tax rate = 12% * log10(income) - 50%

  income          tax rate  taxes paid    approximation

  b) base 10 log:
  $10,000         -2.00%    -$200         ~0%  tax floor/credit for poverty line
  $100,000        10.00%    $10,000       ~10% tax for working class
  $1,000,000      22.00%    $220,000      ~20% for millionaires (37% top marginal tax rate currently)
  $10,000,000     34.00%    $3,400,000    ~35% for multimillionaires
  $100,000,000    46.00%    $46,000,000   ~50% for top millionaire incomes vs 37%
  $1,000,000,000  58.00%    $580,000,000  ~60% for billionaires vs 37%

  notable thresholds:
  $50,000         6.39%     $3,194        ~6.5% tax for median income taxpayers
  $250,000        14.78%    $36,938       ~15% tax for center of mass income taxpayers

It's obvious from the last summary that incomes under $100,000 would pay less under a log-linear flat tax than a 10% flat tax. Millionaires and multimillionairs would pay less than their current 37% top marginal tax rate too. Only top multimillionaires and billionaires would pay higher taxes than they do now.

After running the math, I feel that it's objectively self-evident that a log-linear tax reflects reality better than a 10% flat tax.

The Price of Happiness (2024)

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