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Comment by deepstack | Hacker News Reader

It is never about how much money you have, rather what situation you are in, what you are expecting and what others around you have.

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Yes, according to one of my old economics teachers, above the subsistence level, happiness is approximately how much better off you are than your neighbors.

If you choose to play that game. In my experience focusing on what you need to be happy and ignoring your neighbors is a better recipe for happiness and a whole lot cheaper.

A quote about personal happiness that has lived with me for some time: "comparison is the thief of joy"

Growing up poor and now being more well off than most of our community is actually a source of stress for my wife and I.

I wonder how much of that is innate rather than being driven by consumerist propaganda though. Do I really want a new car because the Jones's next door have one, or because advertising makes me feel somehow inadequate because I don't have one?

I think advertising has a role but it’s amplifying an existing cultural value rather than creating one. A culture which conceives of itself as capitalist naturally encourages thinking of wealth as your score and at least in the U.S. we lack much counter pressure pushing other values as equally important. Even things like religions which discourage this have been distorted to fit, as anyone who’s ever seen a prosperity gospel believer try to talk their way around the clear meaning of the needle’s eye parable can attest.

I think this comes back to basic primate social dynamics. We evolved tracking our social standing relative to others and wealth is pretty easy to compare. Advertising exacerbates that tendency but I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of it with standard issue humans.

Yep!

As someone from a former socialist country, I can confirm.

Situation has got a lot better in the last ~30 years, people have alot more, but since a few people got even more than that, some complain a lot. Average worker family has gone from bicicyles and maybe one yugo (or a "fico" - even smaller/cheaper) to two, maybe three european-mid-range cars + all the modern extras, but are not happy, because their neighbor has as 100k€ mercedes.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Theodore Roosevelt

Indeed. Comparison is not bad as that is what current academia is based on. However also be aware comparison is NOT the ONLY way to experience life.

One of the effect of comparison is that it diminishes one thing over another.

I often find new the thing when I just experience one thing for itself without comparing against a pre-existing experience and thing.

it makes some evolutionary sense tho - because objective wellbeing is only part of the competition. Relative wellbeing is what "counts" for real, esp. when competing for scarce resources.

Well, this is ok when you work more, to get more for yourself...

...out here, people want their neighbours to have less.

There's a local saying that in Finland, people would prefer paying €100 to the neighbour getting paid €50. I take it that's true elsewhere too? :)

Here it's "let my cow die, just if two of neighbours' die"

But yeah... we earn relatively little (compared to you), and have better cars than most of the northern europe... most of them on long year loans... It's not rare to see an (eg.) BMW X7 owner at a gas station pump 9.85eur of gas, than slowly fondle the pump handle, because he only has 10eur for gas. The neighbors see the car, not the amount of gas inside :)

Also a lot of "not in my back yard" behaviour.

It sounds like the basic idea is the same; perceived relative status is more important than actual status, though the details obviously differ.

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