money up to a certain level, abt £60k or 70k in England i think, alleviates your daily subsistence stresses, which allows for you to have time to explore what makes you happy, after that money has very little baring on happiness, however a lack of money has nearly linear correlation with unhappiness.
I think a wise observation. In other words, money to a certain level is a
pre-condition but is not on its own a
sufficient condition for happiness.
Consider this on a macro level. J. Bradford DeLong in his book,
Slouching towards Utopia, points out that before roughly 1870 the lot of humanity, outside a minuscule minority, was basically one of poverty and precarity. But since 1870 there has been a period of extraordinary growth and incredible increase in material wealth. To those who lived before 1870, this would have seemed like achieving utopia. But we feel far from paradise.
This is the paradox of progress: material wants have become in some ways part of the problem.
The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1930 believed that humans were well on their way to solving
the “economic problem” that had historically afflicted human society: namely “the struggle for subsistence.” He thought that in 100 years [i.e. by 2030], in the developed world, people would only need to work a 15 hour week. As a result:
“for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
Although we have not yet reached 2030, it is safe to say this vision will not come to pass by then. But nevertheless his essay is interesting in prompting us to think about the nature of a good life. “We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.” He envisaged a world where money is no longer an end but only a means to a good life.
As Richard Easterlin writes in his book,
Growth Triumphant, the reality has turned out to be rather different
:
“The future…to which the epoch of modern economic growth is leading is one of never ending economic growth, a world in which ever growing abundance is matched by ever rising aspirations…It is a world founded on belief in science and the power of rational inquiry and in the ultimate capacity of humanity to shape its own destiny. The irony is that in this last respect the lesson of history appears to be otherwise: that there is no choice. In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity.”
