> People’s lives might be getting better as we get richer: folks can afford children’s shoes and live longer. Or their lives might be getting worse: lonelier and doing work they feel no part of. Who could possibly say?
Wealth improves lives. Why is this even doubted?
JohnFen•1h ago
Because it's more nuanced than that. There's a sweet spot in the middle here. Studies show that having too little wealth and too much wealth are both about equal in terms of life satisfaction.
That said, my observation is that how happy a person is isn't tightly bound to wealth.
andsoitis•1h ago
I don't know that the article is discussing happiness. The framing is "life is better", which I think ought to be interpreted broadly.
However, even to your point, there's a lot of research that shows how wealth and happiness are correlated, with happiness rising with income, roughly log-linearly. Interestingly, the research also shows that there's an unhappy minority, roughly the bottom 20% of the wellbeing distribution for whom happiness increases with income up to about $100k and then flatlines because their unhappiness stems from problems money doesn't fix (grief, health crisis, loneliness).
andsoitis•1h ago
Wealth improves lives. Why is this even doubted?
JohnFen•1h ago
That said, my observation is that how happy a person is isn't tightly bound to wealth.
andsoitis•1h ago
However, even to your point, there's a lot of research that shows how wealth and happiness are correlated, with happiness rising with income, roughly log-linearly. Interestingly, the research also shows that there's an unhappy minority, roughly the bottom 20% of the wellbeing distribution for whom happiness increases with income up to about $100k and then flatlines because their unhappiness stems from problems money doesn't fix (grief, health crisis, loneliness).