We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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More money, more happiness Today my salary appeared in my bank account. I am definitely happier than I was yesterday, when my bank account contained a very little indeed. The conventional wisdom is that I should not be happier. “Money does not make you happier,” the anti-progress crowd say.
But if that were true, then Africans who get clean water for the first time are not any happier than when their children were dying from disease. OK, maybe the anti-progressites merely mean that once you get to a certain basic income, earning any more from that point does not make you happier. Really?
Let’s take a young family who pay fees to send their children to school. It is a bit of a struggle paying the fees. If they had a bit more money, they would not have to worry about it. Would that do nothing for their happiness? Or let’s say environmentalists had their way and they had less money. The fees would become much more of a burden. Surely that would make them less happy?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Bah, more money IS happiness, and no money is less happiness! Anybody who says otherwise, take away all their money, and tell them, “Gee, you must still be as happy as before, huh?”
There is a kind of paradox in the connection between money and happiness. Surveys in the 1950’s asking people how happy they felt and surveys asking the same question now reveal that people are no happier now than they were in the 50’s though society is undoubtedly richer. However few people living now would opt to go back and live the style of life on offer in the 50’s.
The increase of happiness in having extra wealth seems to dissipate very quickly before you start searching around for more to get your next fix. The extra happiness from sudden wealth is rather like that gained from an injection of heroin. Soon gone and then you’re looking for another fix.
Of course if humanity ever reached a state of complete satisfaction all entreprenurial activity would stop and there would be an end to progress.
There is certainly a connection between wealth and happiness but the relationship is far from a complete explanation and is much more complex than that suggested here.
I believe money is the root of all evil. That is why, as my civic duty, I try to releieve as many of my fellow human beings of the awful burden of money by taking this burden onto my own shoulders.
It is true that money can’t buy happiness, but that is only because they don’t sell happiness. Money can sure buy the stuff that makes you happy, though!
R.C. Dean,
spot on there that they don’t sell happiness. I know for sure that if I would have money for college, I would be very, very happy. If I had money to move to the USA, I also know that I would be very happy. Money is, of course, not the only source of happiness, but it sure is a good way of aquiring sources of happiness.
Paul Coulam is on the money here… Plenty of surveys have found that the key to happiness is change in your material status. This also works for bereavement, disability, etc: when someone dies you become unhappy, then gradually return to normal. When you lose a limb, the same is generally true.
This is why we should ensure students are always short of cash 😉
People who say money can’t buy you happiness are just no good at shopping… 🙂
(courtesy of Brian Micklethwait who heard it somewhere…)
What money can buy is comfort. Comfort facilitates happiness, but is neither a prereqisite nor a guarantee. All other things being equal (triticale’s law – they ain’t), more money will result in more happiness, but it is not pure cause and effect.
My father always says:
‘Money can’t buy you happiness but at least you can be miserable in comfort.’
Money can’t buy you happiness.
Poverty can’t buy you squat.
Money itself is neutral from a value judgement standpoint. It is only it terms of value with what it be replaced with, either removing credit burden or adding a possession (or possibly an emotional satisfaction if it is transferred without expecting anything in return). So it merely represents the potentials it can be used for, and will ultimately be different for different individuals (of course in some cases some people are fixated with the potentials and never turn their surpluses into anything or irrationally view darkness on their financial horizons and refuse to transact, but the act of keeping money itself is ‘buying’ and emotional reward).
A person of meager means will use an increase in cash to payoff creditors and provide for basic sustenance, and while having some positive elements, the joy won’t be overarching as it passes quickly in and out leaving little time to ponder. People of some greater means, who have more surplus cash after covering basic needs have the luxury of examining the potential uses for their surplus (and the reallocators drool over the surplus and all the Good they can do with it based on their value judgements). In essence there is some positive emotion in simply the potential to buy ‘wants’ and then the actual acquisition of that ‘want’ actually settled upon (and perhaps some regret of what has been forgone (but this element is important to keep the individual wanting to produce and perhaps acquire it in the future)). Then those with much greater means, money (and equivalents) stops having the same impact (IMO) as wants and needs are satisfied, charitable transfers are all made, tax obligations satisfied, etc etc. Then money is power. It will be resituated back into credit and equity interests still connected with the individual’s value system (and this of course is the most galling to social engineers as that ‘power’ should reside ‘in the people’ or in other words bureaucrats). But at all times, money represents the culmination of an individual’s value judgements. It is the measure of what they have produced over what they have consumed based on their value judgements. It is a fair and free society that allows the individual, who has turned their intellectual labors, physical labors, and behaviors based in their value judgement into money, to allow then the same courtesy of turning it back into goods and services based on their value judgements, and not have it confiscated, by force, by others who operate under the delusion that their value judgements are superior.
I am sensitive the fact that money/wealth is rarely based exclusively on individual efforts alone, and some consideration should be given to the allocation of (voluntary) collective efforts by those at the pinnacle of their respective association but will not stand for State interference in the transaction and should rather be left to cultural influences.
Of course, money is really nothing more than a consensual hallucination.
toolkien,
Your writing style is so opaque it is hard to follow a word you are saying. Shorter and less convoluted sentences and the inclusion of some paragraph breaks would make what you say a bit easier on the eye.
My friend Russell Taylor (who chronicles the adventures of the money-grubbing Alex in the Telegraph cartoon) put it to me like this:
“Money is like sex. The more you have of it, the more you want.”
This supports Paul’s earlier point, I think, and may also be true. Had I known as a student the sort of income I was to have in my late 20’s, I would probably have planned on retiring! Funnily enough, by the time I got there my expectations had been ratcheted up. The connection between money and happiness is a complicated one: necessary but not sufficient perhaps?
Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you’re okay.
Money, it’s a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I’ll buy me a football team.
Money, get back.
I’m all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it’s a hit.
Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.
I’m in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.
Money, it’s a crime.
Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise it’s no surprise that they’re
Giving none away.
Well, someone had to post it… you were all humming it to yourselves anyway.
toolkien,
Your writing style is so opaque it is hard to follow a word you are saying. Shorter and less convoluted sentences and the inclusion of some paragraph breaks would make what you say a bit easier on the eye.
Noted. I did intend to put a break here bureaucrats). But but didn’t for some reason. As for opaqueness, what I wrote makes sense to me but is likely an example of self conditioning. Believe it or not that was the abbreviated version, reduced to attempt to abide by the succinct ‘house rule’, which may explain the opaque-ness as well. Suffice it to say the nature of money is an intriguing to me which sets my fingers to typing.
Of course, money is really nothing more than a consensual hallucination.
Which makes money not marked against something tangible even more unintelligible (like my writing perhaps).
It seems to me it was Hemingway who said: “I was rich and I was poor. Rich is better”.
I like to tell people that money won’t make them happy. It will, however, make me happy. So, logically, they should give me as much money as they can.
The best comment on the subject I ever heard was that “Money can’t buy happiness but it can certainly rent it.”
If all the Greens lost all their money, and tried to show us “sustainable development” I would be very happy. I am a creature of simple pleasures. 😉
Oh Jacob – surely you realise that is a most unHemingwayesque statement! It was raw, blowsy red hot momma Sophie Tucker who said it!
I think most studies do indicate that there is a strong correlation between money and happiness, up to the point where your material needs are fulfilled. After that other factors become much more significant (like family relationships).
So, of course Africans are happier when they get clean water. That does not mean I automatically become happier when I’m able to upgrade to a nicer set of speakers or whatever.
I suspect that once material needs are met, being happy is partly dependent on being able to content yourself with the things you can afford, and not pining away for what others have.
Anyway, if money really made you happy, psychologists would have to charge 10 dollars an hour.
Heh. It’s really simple, I think:
Money is not sufficient for happiness, but a minimally satisfying amount IS a prime requisite to happiness. Exceptions to both might obtain for a very few individuals, but that is all.
Maybe money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness but it is still good to have. Poverty doesn’t guarantee happiness either.
It is a testament to the precision of their thinking that the Founders stated that humans were entitled, by right, to “life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness.” Indeed, periods of happiness are often interrupted by the various trials and tribulations of life, making them even more sweet in our memories.
But it is important to note that the life spent in pursuit of a worthy goal is an interesting and worthwhile existence, which explains the seeming happy innocence of those geeks and nerds who so dominate the techie culture, and who never seem to notice they don’t have all the latest clothes or club memberships, as long as they have the latest model of computer widget available.
It must also be mentioned that the Enlightenment, and also ancient, meaning of happiness is not simply having a lot of things, or money, but a life of active involvement in creative effort, both intellectual and artistic. This is, perhaps, the reason so many people look back on times of turbulence and struggle as “happy times”, and find the routines of settled living to be boring and humdrum.
Humans find challenges interesting, and even exhilerating, whether it is a small puzzle about why the lawn mower doesn’t start, or working out the mechanics of an artificial heart.
There was an article in the paper the other day about a scientist named Borlaug, who was a pioneer in the “Green Revolution”, credited with a major part of the develpment of new grains that have fed hundreds of millions of people. It was mentioned that, on his 90th birthday, he was attending yet another seminar on food supplies in the developing world. My guess is that Aristotle would call that a good example of a happy life.
Once again, hopefully less ponderously, money is potentials, it is a store of value of the efforts of the individual. Presumably while expending efforts that created the surplus money, people were happy in what they were doing. When people turn around and spend the money, hopefully they are engaging in activities that make them happy. Money is simply a momentary placeholder in the stream of activities in a persons life. Happiness involves interacting with other people and property. I look at it this way, if money itself were happiness, what value is it if you had $1 billion and everyone on the planet disappeared?
” a life of active involvement in creative effort, both intellectual and artistic….”
Creative effort can be done in all fields, science, art, industry, business….
It is this effort, when fruitful that makes people happy and also, usually, rich.
Tragically, it appears that one of the true gauges of wealth vs. happiness is not how much you have, but how much relative to other people. In other words, keeping up with the Joneses is more important than both of you having two Mercs parked in the drive of your estate. This extends to the way people view competition between states. A group of students in the US was asked which would they prefer: the Japanese economy to grow by 1.5% and the US economy to grow by 1%, or the US economy to decline by 1% and the Japanese by 1.5%. Amazingly, a majority favoured the latter.
I really can say in all honesty that I don’t think like that. I don’t resent other people having more money than me, and I don’t feel guilty about having more money than other people. My income covers my essential living expenses by a factor of about four or five to one, and I must say the resulting financial security makes me very very happy indeed.
What the anti-progress crowd really means is actually one step further, I think. Namely that money makes you unhappy. If you believe money is a dirty thing, and generally bad for you, that makes is a lot easier to justify taxing it away, doesn’t it ?
But given the number of millionaires giving a way their wealth as a mean to recover their lost happiness, I think that question is pretty much settled. Empirically, at least.
Those who say that money doesn’t buy happiness just aren’t using right.
As Hayek wrote 60 years ago, “money is the fruit of your freedom”
I believe that money most definetely will make u a happier person if you are already usually a pretty happy individual. How could it not make u happy, it gives you freedom, beautiful things, security, healthier lifestyle, and it causes you to worry alot less about your financial problems.
I do believe, however, that if a child is born rich, and is given everything, he will have problems later in life becasue he won’t have a great appreciation for what he has because he never went without. A person who knows how hard it is to struggle, appreciates money so much more, and the things money can buy definetely makes you happy, even if its just for a while.
Ultimately, you have to be a happy person to begin with, because money alone can’t make you happy. Your family and your view on the world is what makes u happy first.
money is the key to life.
without it u die.
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