FRESH
Hacker News
Hacker News Hacker News* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Study
and their findings lean towards good relationships with family and friends are highly correlation with happiness, health, and many aspects of financial success. The released a book summarizing many results a few years ago:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61273746-the-good-life
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...
If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right
by Elizabeth Dunn, Daniel Gilbert, & Timothy D. Wilson
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10577...
Includes explicit recommendations (even in the short abstract)!
"When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death."
I imagine people who are making more money are probably a better fit for their career, feel more needed, and so forth and so on. I do imagine there's some relationship with income and accumulating more money per se, but I wonder how strong that relationship is once you remove the effects of career satisfaction independent of monetary gain, if such a thing is even possible.
I guess it's hard for me to interpret these effects because there's so much going on in the background in terms of meeting life goals, feeling welcome where you're at and feeling like you're able to contribute what you're best at, and so forth and so on.
The other thing is the ordinate axis is hard for me to make sense of. Like, in Figure 1, life satisfaction goes from say, 2.7 to 3.2 on a scale of 1 to 4? That seems like a relatively narrow range to me, even if it is statistically significant, and my guess is those dots are hiding a lot of variability.
So maybe that's what people mean by diminishing returns? Not that there's no actual continuing increase, but that the increase is incredibly small on some absolute scale of happiness? It's hard to know what to make of the happiness numbers — if, say, consequential changes in some measure of happiness occur far below anything on that ordinate axis, none of these increases with income are of any practical significance.
1. money != income.
2. Zip codes.
3. Age.
4. Social class.
a) 65 year old professor living in Woodside, CA, with a net worth of $250,000K
b) 35 year old HVAC business owner living in Fresno, CA, with a net worth of $2,000,000
First is poor, second is rich, but the study conflates both into the same bucket if they both make, say, $400K/yr
How long will we live? What will our health be like? Would we like to travel? Leave the kids an inheritance? Give it away? All of these can influence the number.
The secret to amassing wealth is to always live beneath your means; but don't forget to enjoy yourself as you make the journey towards retirement.
I know someone extremely wealthy and he continuously says that he's bored, is depressed yet wants to make more.
Meanwhile I work daily with people on a normal/content wage and I feel like they're generally happier people?
I know people really struggling financially and they're constantly depressed.
And income (or wealth increase) can go up exponentially with wealth, so hitting the point where wealth just grows = linear increases in happiness relative to time?
Instead, find joy in cheap hobbies and ignore the status markers. Just do things for yourself, not for others.
That said all the findings that these studies seem to gravitate towards like close relationships also align with my experiences as being powerful effectors.
I did a deep dive on finding how well tax brackets correlate with a log-based tax rate, but couldn't find much. I'll just summarize the results of my AI-assisted research:
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https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/ta...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1iri8nf/tax_b...
By plotting the 2026 single filer tax bracket thresholds against their marginal rates, we can fit them to the classic logarithmic function:
log-linear equation for slope of line (y = m * x + b):
tax rate = m * ln(income) + b
income tax rate ln() tax rate deviation
$12,400 12% 12.10% +0.10%
$50,400 22% 21.52% -0.48%
$105,700 24% 26.50% +2.50%
$201,775 32% 30.84% -1.16%
$256,225 35% 32.44% -2.56%
$640,600 37% 38.60% +1.60%
---
The general public might have a hard time understanding logarithms, so I investigated using base 2, base 10 and base e (ln) to explain them (the base doesn't affect the computed tax rate). Here are the two simplest rules of thumb for a log-based tax system:
a) base 2 log: every time your income doubles, you pay 4.7% higher taxes on the total
b) base 10 log: every time you add a 0 to the end of your income, you pay 15.5% higher taxes on the total
income tax rate taxes paid approximation
a) base 2 log:
$8,192 9.37% $768 ~10%
$16,384 14.03% $2,299 ~15%
$32,768 18.69% $6,124 ~20%
$65,536 23.35% $15,303 ~25%
$131,072 28.01% $36,713 ~30%
$262,144 32.67% $85,642 ~35%
$524,288 37.33% $195,717 ~37% (current top marginal tax rate capped above this point)
$1,048,576 41.99% $440,297 ~40% vs 37%
$2,097,152 46.65% $978,321 ~45% vs 37%
$4,194,304 51.31% $2,152,097 ~50% vs 37%
$8,388,608 55.97% $4,695,104 ~55% vs 37%
$16,777,216 60.63% $10,172,026 ~60% vs 37%
$33,554,432 65.29% $21,907,689 ~65% vs 37%
$67,108,864 69.95% $46,942,650 ~70% vs 37%
$134,217,728 74.61% $100,139,847 ~75% vs 37%
$268,435,456 79.27% $212,788,786 ~80% vs 37%
$536,870,912 83.93% $450,595,756 ~85% vs 37%
$1,073,741,824 88.59% $951,227,882 ~90% vs 37%
b) base 10 log:
$10,000 10.66% $1,066 ~10%
$100,000 26.12% $26,120 ~25%
$1,000,000 41.59% $415,900 ~40% retains current millionaire tax rate near 37%
$10,000,000 57.06% $5,706,000 ~50% at mid-millions vs 37%
$100,000,000 72.52% $72,520,000 ~75% at $100 million vs 37%
$1,000,000,000 87.99% $879,900,000 ~90% at $1 billion vs 37%
From those tables, it's easy to see how a log-linear flat tax rate would work:
a) base 2 log:
4.7% flat tax: tax rate = 4.7% * (number of doublings) - 50%
b) base 10 log:
15.5% flat tax: tax rate = 15.5% * (number of zeros) - 50%
c) base e log (for completeness):
6.7% flat tax: tax rate = 6.7% * (number of zeros) - 50%
After grokking this, we might ask why a non-logarithmic 10% flat tax wouldn't work? The answer is subtle, but it's because it wouldn't incorporate the increased buying power over expenses ratio of higher incomes, so the formula would become tax rate = 0 * (number of zeros) + 10%, making it a regressive tax that penalizes low incomes and lowers taxes on high incomes that don't need the help.
To demonstrate why a 10% flat tax would be regressive, lets calculate the log-linear tax rate that meets the current $2 trillion US tax income:
tax rate = m * ln(income) + b
calculation of m for ln(income) derived from current values:
m = (T - (b * AGI)) / (AGI * ln(u))
m = log-linear slope to solve for
T = total US tax revenue (currently about $2 trillion)
b = -50% (floor held constant as a starting point)
AGI = annual gross income of US (currently about $15 trillion)
u = center of mass income of all taxpayers with half of tax revenues above and below (currently about $250,000)
m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * ln(250000)) = 0.05096 ~= 5%
calculation of m for base 2 log and base 10 log for completeness:
a) base 2 log:
m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * log2(250000)) = 0.03532 ~= 3.5%
b) base 10 log:
m = (2e12 - (-0.5 * 15e12)) / (15e12 * log10(250000)) = 0.11733 ~= 12%
final tax rates to meet $2 trillion in tax revenue using base 10 log-linear tax at m = 12%:
tax rate = 12% * log10(income) - 50%
income tax rate taxes paid approximation
b) base 10 log:
$10,000 -2.00% -$200 ~0% tax floor/credit for poverty line
$100,000 10.00% $10,000 ~10% tax for working class
$1,000,000 22.00% $220,000 ~20% for millionaires (37% top marginal tax rate currently)
$10,000,000 34.00% $3,400,000 ~35% for multimillionaires
$100,000,000 46.00% $46,000,000 ~50% for top millionaire incomes vs 37%
$1,000,000,000 58.00% $580,000,000 ~60% for billionaires vs 37%
notable thresholds:
$50,000 6.39% $3,194 ~6.5% tax for median income taxpayers
$250,000 14.78% $36,938 ~15% tax for center of mass income taxpayers
After running the math, I feel that it's objectively self-evident that a log-linear tax reflects reality better than a 10% flat tax.
Ever been to a third world country and seen happy people who make just a couple hundred bucks a month, yet are very healthy and happy? I have. It's very life changing.
Who are the historical figures that you revere the most? Did their positive influences upon your life originate from making and having money?
It is still interesting to see how the actual numbers shake out though, especially the section on how the income quintile groups actually scale linearly instead of log linearly with reported happiness.