

The Hedonic Treadmill - MikeCapone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

======
rajat
As someone who has been both near-poor and affluent, I can tell you, I'm a
hell of a lot happier with money. I live in a neighborhood today that is made
up of relatively affluent people, and these people generally are certainly a
lot happier than the folks I grew up with in the Bronx.

Now, most certainly the scale changes. That is, if you compare me to when I'm
worth $1000 dollars to when I'm worth a million dollars, that's a 1000 times
difference. But it's not the same 1000 times difference if I were to go to a
billion dollars. The first 1000 times is worth a lot more. The difference
between your first billion and your tenth billion has got to be vanishingly
little. But that first 1000, from a $1000 to a million? Hoo hoo hoo!

I think anyone who says money doesn't make you happier should go a day with
miss-meal cramps.

~~~
_delirium
At the very poor extreme I agree, but I haven't found much of a correlation,
and perhaps even a weak inverse correlation, once you get past "can afford to
feed yourself". In particular, the people I know with professional jobs making
$100k+ seem to mostly be less happy than the just-sort-of-making-it
artist/musician types I know. And my Greek relatives are generally happier
than my American relatives, despite being considerably poorer.

For my own part, I've been a grad student with a $20k stipend for years, and
am pretty happy about it; I even feel reasonably well off, since there are
tons of ways I could be more frugal if I really needed to (I spend a lot on
beer and eating out). I guess having $30k or $40k or $100k might be nicer, but
I can't imagine it'll be _that_ big a difference? We'll see, I suppose.

~~~
rajat
See, the biggest part of my happiness comes from the independence of doing
what I want to do, without having to sacrifice the things I'd like my family
to have. I can do a startup any time I want; I don't have to worry about my
job. You don't get that, along with a family, on 30K or 40K or even a 100K
unless you've saved for a long time.

The real problem is that people don't know what'll make them happy. Things
that money buy don't make you happy? That's bullshit. Yes, there are very
important things in life that money can't buy, but there are quite a few
things that money buys that does get you happiness. For me, money has bought
me independence of action that has made me very, very happy.

So people don't know what will make them happy, and the researchers are asking
the wrong question and reaching the wrong conclusion. What keeps people from
getting happy is that they think an extra 400 square feet of home, when
they've already got 2500 square feet will make them happy; or that a car with
300 hp will make them twice as happy as a car with 150 hp. And then the
researchers are coming along and saying hey look, these people have more money
but they ain't happy, so money doesn't make you happy. No, all it says is that
buying the wrong things with money is not going to make you happier.

Don't tell me that those billionaires that spent those millions of dollars
with the Russians to go out into space weren't made deliriously happy with
what their money bought them. They just knew what to buy to make them happy.

~~~
_delirium
I agree freedom of action is a good feature of money, though it's really more
like a freedom-from-need-to-make-money-to-survive, a kind of defensive benefit
of money as opposed to something actually positive about money. I don't think
you need to make a ton of money for that if you have a frugal lifestyle,
though. I have enough savings to sustain my current lifestyle for years if I
quit grad school tomorrow and never got a job, and I've never made >$40k in my
life. But when I was making around $40k (thanks to a nice combination of
fellowships), I saved almost half of it each year, and that plus some
investments adds up quickly. I guess I could've spent more instead of saving
it, but I honestly have no idea what I would've spent it on; I wasn't exactly
living a deprived life just to save money.

Admittedly, I expect it'd take more than $20k/year to live comfortably if I
had a family!

~~~
rajat
No, it's more than just not needing the things. For example, I'm involved with
a startup right now and the founders needed a decent amount for ongoing
expenses until VC and angel funding can be arranged. Well, I can provide that
money very quickly (for stock that I hope will be worth a lot more at some
point) since I'm very involved and a lot of due diligence is not required. My
first startup was self-funded with several other founders; that meant coming
up with a pretty sizeable amount of money up front to get the company started
(there were hardware components involved), and then go for a long period of
time with absolutely no income.

Independence to take action means also being able to afford to take that
action; not just that you can learn to avoid expenses.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I could see that. I guess the world I live in---my own situation, and
those people I know---just doesn't involve lots of money ever being needed to
take action. It's nice to have _some_ cushion, so e.g. I can fly to Boston
tomorrow if it turns out to be needed for some reason, and can pay my rent for
a year or two if I decide to suddenly take off, but I just don't have any
situation where I could see needing $500k or something in order to take
action.

I know plenty of people doing startups, and I could even throw $10k their way
if it'd help out (I've offered), but they just don't need it. The web side of
things is so capital-free these days that they have no trouble self-funding,
and what money they do need is easy to get from a few consulting gigs here or
there (web-dev stuff seems to pay insane hourly rates).

I can imagine things I would do if I had _infinite_ money, but they're more
pie-in-the-sky "establish a fund for [x]" sort of philanthropy things. In my
normal life, I just don't run across action I really want to take that is
money-constrained.

------
Empact
One response to this is to plan your own changes in experience: given that
you'll enjoy but then adapt quickly to improvements, you can increase your
enjoyment over time by alternating between simple and indulgent lifestyles,
with simplicity being the ice-water to complement the ice cream.

In a similar vein, another recommendation is to favor differential experiences
over static improvements, e.g. traveling rather than buying a nicer car. Your
expectation of enjoyment from the car is overestimated because you consider
the enjoyment relative to your current state, discounting your own adjustment
once you have it, while travel is continually changing by definition, both
with your departure and your return.

Interesting subject, hacking your own enjoyment of life.

~~~
endtwist
Interestingly, the latter part of your argument may not hold true for certain
types of experiences: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224308>

------
mahipal
If you haven't seen it, Dan Gilbert's TED talk -- "Why are we happy?" --
presents some good experimental results on this topic.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_w...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html)

The Wikipedia article (and even the choice of the word "treadmill") suggests
that people maintain a roughly constant state of happiness despite
improvements in their life. But it also works the other way -- people return
to a baseline of happiness even with huge disasters in their life.

------
danbmil99
Seems like the ideal scenario is constantly accelerating wealth.

