How much money do you need to be happy?

Any

aldo wrote: »

The more you earn the less bothered about bargain hunting, I guess people think if they work harder to earn more they should be rewarded.
A couple earning £12k each should find it enough to live on and bring up 1 child.

I don't know where you live, but only nursery fees for the wife to be able to go to work are over £400 a month where I live...
And the average mortgage payment is £500...
And then bills etc... Cannot see how £1600 nett is going to pay for all that. If you want to have some fun that is.

I believe more like £15k each is the figure I can imagine family surviving on.

mewbie_2

How much money do you need to be happy?

Slightly more than I currently have.

It's always just a little bit more.

ninky_2

JayScottGreenspan wrote: »

What have morals got to do with it? Surely the overall standard of living of the population is more important?

PS - I hate tobacco and arms companies too.

I thought you brought morality into it by suggesting that the free market (ergo the profit motive) automatically drives forward the standard of living of society and gives us improvements in living conditions in the form of improved technology etc etc.

I am disagreeing by pointing out the profit motive is only just that - motivated by profit. This may give us improvements. It may give us problems. It may give us products that could actually be better but aren't because it is more financially beneficial to someone to make something worse.

As such, the profit motive / free market is a very flawed system if you are looking at it from the point of view of social improvement.

I also agree that good intentions (in the form of government) can lead to bad results, if things aren't thought through properly - intention is not the same as result. However, surely we are intelligent enough to come up with a social system that has both good intentions (the free market does not) AND good results (e.g.. not communist Russia).

bootman

I would like enough to be able to afford pay someone to come and paint my house for me at the moment.

Enough to pay an ironing lady.

Enough for a nice new Smart car.

Enough to go on holiday to Dubai maybe twice a year!:rolleyes:

I agree with a post further up, a take home pay of £10k a month after tax would be perfect.

Note to self - Remember to buy the lottery ticket!:o

bendix

ninky wrote: »

However, surely we are intelligent enough to come up with a social system that has both good intentions (the free market does not) AND good results (e.g.. not communist Russia).

Well b****r me. Now, that's a good idea! Why on earth hasn't anyone thought of it already in the .. .. oh . . . tens of thousands of years of human existence and social interaction?

Here's why: HUMAN NATURE.

JayScottGreenspan

ninky wrote: »

As such, the profit motive / free market is a very flawed system if you are looking at it from the point of view of social improvement.

It seems to have given us a pretty unbelievably fantastic standard of living.

JayScottGreenspan

ninky wrote: »

However, surely we are intelligent enough to come up with a social system that has both good intentions (the free market does not) AND good results (e.g.. not communist Russia).

I think the crux of the problem is that any system which is not broadly 'free' requires the state to force the people to obey it.

You can only go so far down the socialist route before you have to start oppressing your people to make them tow the line.

I think the modern mixed economy is a great balance.

bendix

JayScottGreenspan wrote: »

It seems to have given us a pretty unbelievably fantastic standard of living.

ninky doesnt believe using historical perspective to prove arguments is valid. It's unhelpful, evidently, to point out that a combination of liberal democracy underpinned by free-market capitalism has enabled the vast majority of people from a life of poverty, hunger, poorhousing, disease and early death (Thomas Hobbes called man's life in the late 17th Century "nasty brutish and short") to one where even the poorest - her definition, not mine, although I accept it's all relative - are able to gorge on Chicken McNuggets while watching daytime tv.

Or perhaps it wasn't the profit motive, the advance of capitalism or anything like that, which generated (and financed) those advances.

Perhaps it was fairy dust.

JayScottGreenspan

There is a danger of taking the free market mentality too far, of course.

It is possible for some ideas which aren't 'free market' type ideas to work well for ther greater good. I think this might be what ninky is driving at. For example, no one would abolish the NHS, even though that's clearly quite a slightly socialist concept.

Equally, there are lots of socialist-type concepts that are clearly crap (eg the communist manifesto). I guess the balance is important, which is why I prefer to judge ideas based on how they will effect quality of life, rather than let morals or ideologies get in the way.

reduceditem

JayScottGreenspan wrote: »

For example, no one would abolish the NHS, even though that's clearly quite a slightly socialist concept.

There are plenty of people out there who would do exactly that