This doesn't pass muster when there are literally millions of us living perfectly normal lives at $70k a year or less and living enjoyable, "simple" lives with plentiful hobbies.
The reality is that it takes absurdly few resources to make a normal and well adjusted human happy. Happiness doesn't come from money, though unhappiness can come directly from poverty. If you are fed, housed, and have enough free time to explore your interests, and have sufficient social connections, that's usually all it takes. The way quality scales also means that unless you are playing dumb ideological games like "Getting the best", you will have satisfaction beyond your dreams at a 2X price point from the basics. Eating steak every day isn't that much more expensive than eating beans and rice every day, and certainly doesn't require taking home $100k more than the US average.
Even in a high cost of living port city in a liberal place that embraces weirdness and hasn't built a new housing unit in a decade, $150k total before taxes gets you the ability to outbid most other people looking for housing, enables you to afford buying the expensive eggs just because you feel empathy for chickens, allows you to buy beef when it's not on sale as a regular experience because it's more convenient than finding recipes using cheaper meats, allows you to buy a very nice car and pay exorbitant parking for it, gets you more healthcare than you can use, gets you an overpriced getaway vacation a year, and still putting plenty of money into retirement accounts and a savings account, pays for cheaper colleges, allows you to afford an overpriced gaming computer AND consoles, allows you to buy a new VR headset you never use etc. With a small increase in pay or an ability to live away from the city center, you can raise kids with good expected outcomes. Kids are expensive but the people insisting on $50k a year private schooling are literally insane.
If you are still not satisfied with "stuff" at that point, the problem is not money, the problem is you.
The hedonistic treadmill (and more importantly, normalcy bias) does NOT imply that already rich people will seek more wealth. It implies that people who seek wealth will never be satisfied by the amount of wealth they currently have. People who don't seek wealth but still get it will be satisfied with that amount of wealth. If you are happy with your minimal needs met, you will still be happy as a millionaire, and if you are not happy with your needs met, you will continue being unhappy as a trillionaire.
Some broken people have "I need more money" as a trait. We shouldn't build society to optimize around them.
The moment you breach a billion dollars net worth, you should only be allowed to be paid in teams of psychologists dedicated to finding out your fucking issue.
> This doesn't pass muster when there are literally millions of us living perfectly normal lives at $70k a year or less and living enjoyable, "simple" lives with plentiful hobbies.
The reality is that it takes absurdly few resources to make a normal and well adjusted human happy. Happiness doesn't come from money, though unhappiness can come directly from poverty. If you are fed, housed, and have enough free time to explore your interests, and have sufficient social connections, that's usually all it takes. The way quality scales also means that unless you are playing dumb ideological games like "Getting the best", you will have satisfaction beyond your dreams at a 2X price point from the basics. Eating steak every day isn't that much more expensive than eating beans and rice every day, and certainly doesn't require taking home $100k more than the US average.
Even in a high cost of living port city in a liberal place that embraces weirdness and hasn't built a new housing unit in a decade, $150k total before taxes gets you the ability to outbid most other people looking for housing, enables you to afford buying the expensive eggs just because you feel empathy for chickens, allows you to buy beef when it's not on sale as a regular experience because it's more convenient than finding recipes using cheaper meats, allows you to buy a very nice car and pay exorbitant parking for it, gets you more healthcare than you can use, gets you an overpriced getaway vacation a year, and still putting plenty of money into retirement accounts and a savings account, pays for cheaper colleges, allows you to afford an overpriced gaming computer AND consoles, allows you to buy a new VR headset you never use etc. With a small increase in pay or an ability to live away from the city center, you can raise kids with good expected outcomes. Kids are expensive but the people insisting on $50k a year private schooling are literally insane.
If you are still not satisfied with "stuff" at that point, the problem is not money, the problem is you.
The hedonistic treadmill (and more importantly, normalcy bias) does NOT imply that already rich people will seek more wealth. It implies that people who seek wealth will never be satisfied by the amount of wealth they currently have. People who don't seek wealth but still get it will be satisfied with that amount of wealth. If you are happy with your minimal needs met, you will still be happy as a millionaire, and if you are not happy with your needs met, you will continue being unhappy as a trillionaire.
Some broken people have "I need more money" as a trait. We shouldn't build society to optimize around them.
The moment you breach a billion dollars net worth, you should only be allowed to be paid in teams of psychologists dedicated to finding out your fucking issue.