Monday, November 10, 2014

The marginal cost of buying happiness

Working from home is so good for me that I can't think of any reasonable salary increase that would induce me to switch to a job where I have to go into the workplace.  I might consider doing it on a temporary basis for some ridiculous amount of money - like if I earned enough in six months to pay off my entire mortgage - but only if I could be certain that I could return to my current arrangement afterwards. If not, it wouldn't be worth this.

Some people would use this as an argument in support of the idea that money can't buy happiness.  But the fact remains that quite a bit of the happiness I do have was bought with money.  It's not that more money wouldn't make me happier, it's that the cost in happiness of earning more money would be greater than the amount of happiness that additional money would buy me. 

So, if my quick googling has led me to the correct economic terminology, it's not that money can't buy happiness.  It's that there's a threshold where the marginal cost (in happiness) of more money is greater than the amount of happiness that that same money could buy.

No comments: