Is there a cap where more money barely correlates with an increase in one's own happiness?

[noname223]

I read money has marginal utitlity when it comes to happiness. Give a poor person 5000 dollars and in many cases he will be really happy about it. Give a billonaire 50.000 dollars and he won't be as happy as the poor guy even though he got more money.

In the past you read this quite often. I even heard it in a lecture. Studies have shown that it doesn't matter whether you have an income of like 5.000-8.000 dollar after tax or having unlimited amounts of money. It won't make a significant change in one's happiness level. New studies come to a new conclusion. In fact it makes a significant difference. If you are a billionaire you are on average more happy than someone who has a monthly income of 8.000 dollars after tax.

In fact many people will say. Of course that's right this is a common sense statement. Though, in science this intuitive conclusion was considered false for a long time. Until newer studies have changed it.

It is intereting because it poses the question how much can we trust empirical findings and science in general. There seems to be a huge replication crisis in academia (e.g. psychology).

What do you think?

 

[SASU-KE]

There was a thread posted on Reddit by the son of a billionaire. He said his favorite thing of all was being able to travel on a private jet since this allowed them to just bypass every queue,waiting line and baggage check and just board the plane directly on the tarmac.

So yeah, most of your happiness I believe can be achieved by having decent food, owning your own home and having access to proper Education, healthcare, water and electricity.

But things keep getting better with more money, so I think there's no cap.

 

[OnceTheHappiestMan]

First of all I think that there is a huge replication crisis in academia as you say, particularly in fields like psychology and sociology.

My personal experience (as invalid as any other) is one of moving from a quite poor background to accommodated middle class, and that hasn't make me any happier, at least not because of material gain.

Of course common sense should tell us that there must be such a cap, it could be that of not having to worry about the basic needs (will I be able to eat today or next week? will I be able to sleep under a roof? etc.) or it could be that of not needing to work to cover those needs. But I've seen enough depressed or at least unhappy rich people, and enough happy people that lives at the limit of not having anything that I don't really know what is the cause of happiness anymore. Poor environments have not only the evident lack of material resources, but also higher violence rates, worse sanitary conditions etc. But people find happiness regardless of that.

I still think that money is a factor in the equation, but not a heavily weighted one.

 

[Pluto]