Comments on The Psy-Fi Blog: Money Can't Buy Happiness

I mostly disagree. Here’s my take …. When I was a...

2011-03-28T22:16:15.387+01:00

I mostly disagree. Here’s my take ….

When I was a poor student-to-entry level worker, I was clearly not happy.

Then, when I’d increased my income, along with tuition reimbursement, then my happiness factor shot up some more.

And finally, when I got a job where I could control my hours, telecommute half the time, and still have a good deal of money left over, for both travel and coursework, I was the happiest.

Now, my latest goal is to be able to work 1/2 that time, while completing the rest of the income stream, by trading futures/options. Once that happens, then I would have reached a pinnacle of operational happiness.

So I don’t believe this `money doesn’t lead to happiness` sophistry. It certainly does but yes, you need some commonsense to make it work out.

The hedonic treadmill vis-a-vis `keeping up with the Jones` is a cop out. It’s a way of selling out and being mainstream, instead of being an individual. Those are psychological hangups, money didn’t create them. They were in one’s psyche from either familial or cultural conditioning. Overcome them and you’ll see, money does give you a heck of a lot of freedom and subsequently, a great deal of happiness.

Hi, Interesting thoughts! I believe it’s not poss...

2010-01-07T17:28:06.056Z

Hi,
Interesting thoughts! I believe it’s not possible to make a general statement on whether money makes people more or less happy. Money comes with a whole set of new elements that may have good or bad impact on our happiness, and depending on how susceptible we are to every one of them, the conclusion will go one way or the other (i.e. different from person to person). I recently made an effort to provide a more comprehensive picture of what these ad- and disadvantages are. I invite you to have a look at Money and Happiness and tell me what you think!
Thank you, Nick

It's just lucky that marketeers and politic...

2010-01-04T16:32:18.746Z
It's just lucky that marketeers and politicians don't like using these techniques to manipulate our behaviour.

This is key, in my mind.

Credit-card companies figured out how to get most of us to spend ourselves into debt and thereby make ourselves miserable in a world of plenty. Frugality blogs have helped a lot of people out by helping them understand the manipulation being done to them.

I am hoping that we will see the same sort of thing take place at investing blogs in coming days.

Rob

Your analysis, as well as the work of Kahneman et ...

2010-01-04T06:52:57.767Z
Your analysis, as well as the work of Kahneman et al, is just a post hoc rationalization of being in a state of "not wealthy". Not to mention that any attempt to describe what makes "people" happy based on how a research sample behaves in a controlled experiment is fundamentally flawed.

For example, consider your own presumptions: you describe having more money in terms of having more income (thus, longer hours and more stress) rather than more wealth (more independence, a wider array of choices in life, more influence over others). You describe happiness as if it were equivalent to contentment or pleasure, when it is not equivalent to either. Pleasure and contentment are ephemeral, while happiness is not.

Although it is rarely admitted, for many people, having increased power over others would produce a more profound sense of happiness than more travel or more time with family. And some research shows that most people would define "having enough money" strictly in terms of having more money than one's peers (often unwittingly).

"Co-operation" is never a matter of equal partnership. One decides to "co-operate" with the IRS with as much volition as an apprehended criminal "co-operates" with the police. The goal of someone who seeks to acquire wealth is to have other people co-operate with him/her rather than forever having to co-operate with others.

I would agree that seeking wealth with no sense of purpose is unlikely to lead to fulfillment; but, driven people almost never seek wealth without any sense of what to do with it or how they desire to use it.