That doesn't change that even across your entire life, probably only one in ten people need an organ transplant in the first place.
Circumstantially some people can need dramatically more or less money. Even if you take an average life in the US, the amount you need to comfortably live in rural Tennessee vs urban New York is enormous.
But discussions about money and happiness are not usually about the extreme cases and outliers, but about the average. When you have a case about "average life expectancy" you cannot refute it with the exceptions we know exist to the rule.
The principal still remains - on average, the poorer you are, the lower on the Maslow hierarchy you idle, and thus the less happy / healthy you are, simply because you have less fulfillment. Your hierarchy could be dramatically harder to climb, as is the case of a liver cancer patient, but we are not talking about edge cases, we are talking about the average. Once you climb that hierarchy, and have all your base needs fulfilled, and have effective financial security, having more money is not going to make you tangibly happier. IE, buying a yacht instead of renting a traditional boat is not a marked increase in happiness compared to having hot food to eat each night or waking up in the morning without worrying if you are losing your apartment today.
Why does the argument always go to Veblen goods (Yachts etc...) in this discussion rather than exactly what I indicate - health, wellness, options, access etc...?
Edge cases are the ones that make or break people. Holding aside the argument for socialized or egalitarian healthcare, it's undeniable that major events in someone's life (major illness, accident, death, foreclosure etc...) are a primary factor for decrease in happiness. Since it's also undeniable that money can offset or augment the impact of these events - it is very relevant to take those into account.
Said another way, everyone will eventually have an "edge case" irrespective of whether it is liver cancer or otherwise. Having means to ease the troubles related to those cases, have a direct effect on how badly they are felt.
>Edge cases are the ones that make or break people. Holding aside the argument for socialized or egalitarian healthcare, it's undeniable that major events in someone's life (major illness, accident, death, foreclosure etc...) are a primary factor for decrease in happiness. Since it's also undeniable that money can offset or augment the impact of these events - it is very relevant to take those into account.
Yes. Hence the media's trend of attempting to shift blame to people who have experienced edge events by deriding them as irresponsible or whatever. It's better for the serfs to think that "money can't buy happiness" and ignore that "money can prevent or mitigate common causes of unhappiness". It's also better if the serfs remain jealous of the wealthy, but not actually knowledgeable about the vastness of their wealth. If enough people consciously hold the thought which you detailed in mind, economic revolution is inevitable, and, failing that, violent revolution is probable.
Because the edge cases are well known to be horribly, poorly managed by individual finance. Because they instill a tremendous discrepancy on the propensity of individuals to thrive in given socioeconomic conditions, they are the exact kinds of things we should be doing our hardest to remove from strict capitalism.
The first world has already moved on to socialized medicine precisely for this reason. Besides health expenses, the circumstantial costs of differing degrees of needs satisfaction are much less varied - they effectively just become approximated by the regional costs of food and shelter.
Luxury goods are brought up because we are talking about after base needs are fulfilled, and predicate the discussion on the basis that, one, the US is barbaric in its lack of comprehensive medical access to its people, and two, the edge cases where money can still buy you better care once you migrate away from allocating medicine based on ability to pay rather than need are extremely rare, and while still being a problem, don't predicate the whole discussion.
Basically, anyone sanely arguing for any of the socialist principals around happiness thresholds or sane taxation are starting from the presumption that negative externalities of environment like health problems out of the control of the individual need to be collectively accounted for rather than individually, and to do otherwise - as is the case with Steve Jobs liver transplant - is unethical. Primarilly because while we may have a shortage of liver transfer candidates today, the fact that demand for liver transplants comes from having wealth rather than need for replacement livers is certainly stymieing research into growing livers for transplant, as is the case with most organs needed for transplants. The capitalistic nature of medicine and the predisposition of those in need of it to have the least to pay for it contributes to why we have dozens of viagra-esque medicines with billions going into research for whatever the billionaire class might want medically while essential research in edge problems, especially chronic lifelong debilitating diseases like Parkinsons, is crippled by a lack of profit potential because the sufferers are often destitute or dying.
Circumstantially some people can need dramatically more or less money. Even if you take an average life in the US, the amount you need to comfortably live in rural Tennessee vs urban New York is enormous.
But discussions about money and happiness are not usually about the extreme cases and outliers, but about the average. When you have a case about "average life expectancy" you cannot refute it with the exceptions we know exist to the rule.
The principal still remains - on average, the poorer you are, the lower on the Maslow hierarchy you idle, and thus the less happy / healthy you are, simply because you have less fulfillment. Your hierarchy could be dramatically harder to climb, as is the case of a liver cancer patient, but we are not talking about edge cases, we are talking about the average. Once you climb that hierarchy, and have all your base needs fulfilled, and have effective financial security, having more money is not going to make you tangibly happier. IE, buying a yacht instead of renting a traditional boat is not a marked increase in happiness compared to having hot food to eat each night or waking up in the morning without worrying if you are losing your apartment today.