
The Guardian’s bogus claim about money, long commutes, and life satisfaction - pascal07
http://www.elezea.com/2013/11/money-satisfaction/
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mhaymo
> Earning more money doesn’t increase satisfaction with life. It just
> compensates for the lack of satisfaction (“Utility” in the formula) caused
> by longer commutes.

I don't understand this line. How can money compensate for a loss of utility
without increasing utility? An earlier quote from the paper asks "how much
additional income would a commuter have to earn in order to be as well off as
somebody who does not commute?", and the phrase "as well off" implies to me
that the person is _as satisfied_.

Apart from the "40% of salary" detail, it seems to me that The Guardian got it
right.

~~~
jeffehobbs
Agreed. As I read this piece, I was struggling to find the part The Guardian
got wrong. If anything this is an argument over semantics.

~~~
throwaway0094
Well, not everyone earns the average income (obviously). So the percentage is
wrong for everyone.

~~~
mpclark
Indeed, but harmless generalisations and simplifications like this are part of
the art of making it read like a newspaper article rather than a contract.

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wac
So this blogger has pointed out 2 problems with a single Guardian quote. The
first point doesn't make sense to me as it seems to argue that the Guardian's
"be as satisfied with" means the same thing as "increase satisfaction".

The second point seems to me to be almost as poor. The blogger claims that the
40% more money claim from the Guardian is bogus since the footnote clearly
shows that their calculation is in absolute Euro terms not percentages.
However if you read the next sentence of the footnote:

"Full compensation for commuting one hour (one way), compared with no
commuting, is estimated to require an additional monthly income of
approximately 515 Euro or 40 percent of the average monthly wage. This
valuation implies that the time spent commuting is worth 1.6 times the hourly
wage or the average compensation for working. [...]" (Page 17, Footnote 14)

It seems that the research authors themselves argue that their research
implies commuting is worth a multiple of hourly wage. Thus we easily verify
that the weighted commuting hours (1.6*2) is 40% of the normal (8 hour)
working day.

The Guardian could have been more accurate by adding a "average" to their
quote, but I think that this is implied by the context anyway.

~~~
hyperpape
It's also a common assumption in economics that as your income increases, the
amount that you value your time (in monetary terms) will also increase (thus
in a lot of urban areas, living close to your work is very expensive, and
outer areas are cheaper). It would be nice to see get empirical confirmation
by seeing how the "cost" of the commute is different for people with higher
incomes, but it's not like this is a strange claim.

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cylinder
Commuting is about attitude. Plenty of people don't mind, or even enjoy, their
commutes. The future is clearly office hotels paired with remote work. Go in
the office a couple of times a week to reconnect personally. Work from home
the rest of the time. It's the ideal mix. Company gets to reduce their real
estate requirements due to hoteling: what is an office, these days, anyways?
You don't need your family photos all over your desk. You need a laptop and a
phone - grab a desk and get to work. When you aren't in the office, someone
else is using that desk. Corporations invented airbnb long ago.

Certain areas are quite conducive to this lifestyle. NYC metro area, for
example. There are quite beautiful villages in upstate NY sitting on a Metro-
North stop, about 1.5 hours from Grand Central. If you only had to do that
twice a week, it's completely manageable (especially in Autumn when you can
gaze out the window on the Hudson Valley line at the incredible fall foliage).

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officemonkey
If only economics were the only factor in commute time.

Housing price, cost of living, and public school quality play a significant
role in determining where to live for many people.

I've avoided positions in cities like New York and Washington DC precisely
because I didn't want to (a) live in a shoe box, (b) spend 3+ hours in a daily
commute, and/or (c) pay for private schools.

I would take a pay cut to reduce my commute and relocate to a lower-cost area.
How much is almost entirely based on how much I can reduce my mortgage
payment.

~~~
bigdubs
This is an important point and what I wish the author had made.

Your choice of where to live is determined by a plurality of factors that are
hard to boil down to 'satisfaction' vs. pay.

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kabouseng
One should also be careful about making blanket statements. For a high earning
individual it is possible no amount of additional pay will compensate for the
lost time.

~~~
stef25
That's exactly why I want to switch to a lower paying job to be closer to
home.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I moved from Silicon Valley back to my hometown after 10 years, at a 50% pay
cut. Still was paid 50% more than my geo-contemporaries. And since I moved
I've gotten into consulting, which is location-independent, and my pay is back
up to Valley levels. So pretty sweet deal.

This only worked because I had contacts in the business. That got me steady
contracting work all this time (decades).

~~~
kabouseng
Do you find that you have to travel to SV regularly to visit your clients /
find new prospects?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure, at least in the past. I went a week a month to wherever the customer
was. That sucked a little, but I didn't complain (much) because some folks
(salesmen) travel 3 weeks a month.

Now, I use collaboration tools. Actually I got a contract writing them for a
Mt View startup, and we dogfood the product. Its great; I'm in constant
contact with my team, we find bugs fast, and the product is gaining traction.

So last time I travelled it was to an offsite planning meeting (folks from 4
states met in a Chicago rental office). And that was more than a year ago.

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droob
Also, in this example, the part they got wrong-ish is kinda beside the point.
Most people will read it as "a person with a 1-hr commute has to earn (yadda
yadda yadda) more money to be as satisfied with life…"

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sgdesign
Shouldn't we be suspicious of subjective measures like "satisfaction" anyway?
I know there are a lot of psychology studies based on similarly vague
concepts, but I always feel like it's just too easy for scientists (to say
nothing of journalists) to fudge their numbers either way to prove their
point.

~~~
hyperpape
There is a lot of research on the validity or lack thereof of various measures
of satisfaction. Like most areas in the social sciences, it's a complicated
topic. Blanket suspicion isn't warranted unless you know something about the
methods involved.

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robmcm
Well done for putting the effort in to check facts.

