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Breve ,

Relevant study: princeton.edu/…/deaton_kahneman_high_income_impro…

tl;dr: Happiness increases logarithmically with income, leveling off at about $75,000/year (at least in 2010).

maniclucky ,

The phenomenon is called the Hedonic Treadmill

Ummdustry ,

NO IT’S NOT, THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT PHENOMINA.

Diminishing returns: My first dollar buys a loaf of bread necessary for my survival, my millionth buys me 0.01% of a sports car.

Hedonic treadmill: Neither my sports car nor loaves of bread seem as wonderous to me after they’ve become a part of my routine.

maniclucky ,

Not to be contrary, but the last line of the summary in the wiki article is:

The hedonic treadmill viewpoint suggests that wealth does not increase the level of happiness

I would infer from that, that increased wealth has increasingly diminishing returns after a certain point.

I did try to follow the link, but Investopedia broke it on their end and I can’t seem to find it (aside: wooof, that is a bad layout). Any good sources for me?

OwenEverbinde , (edited )
@OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

Oh. Just over the median income in America. So literally half the population of the most powerful country in the world is insulated from the problem.

EDIT: okay, looks like I was looking at median household income and not median personal income. Meaning my math is off.

maniclucky ,

I feel like the mean is rather skewed in the US. It’s almost certainly less than half that are insulated.

quo ,

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    maniclucky ,

    You’re right, I was off on a weird thing. Was thinking about the skew between mean and median indicating this or that, but starting in median keeps us in population counting territory. I was just wrong. Derp.

    Ummdustry ,

    I mean, cost of living is higher than america than other parts of the world and other parts of the world have state-funded security programs that take some of the anxiety away from living.

    Here in (western) europe I’d wager at half of people (including me) are insulated from “poverty induced misery”. There are an awful lot of stupidly big and expensive cars on the road.

    Am I glad that ~400 million (200 mill in north america, 100 mill in europe, 100 mill everywhere else) people now live in that state of relative freedom? absolutely, but it is depressing to think about what a minority of humanity it really is.

    OwenEverbinde ,
    @OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one avatar

    Yeah… It’s a tiny sliver of the species.

    Pickle_Jr ,

    That’s about $105k in today’s dollars.

    You know, typical middle class income. /s

    jaybone ,

    Lol in some places that’s considered low income.

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