BobG said:
There's a point of diminishing returns. Once you're making enough to be secure - i.e. enough to eat, dependable transportation, dependable medical care, etc - extra money only raises your happiness a little bit.
I think that's true even for those that are unhappy even though they make a lot of money. They were probably at least a little bit unhappier before they started making enough money to give them a new regret - that their money didn't allow them to escape an unfulfilling life.
This point makes the most sense here. Too often, I think we just look at the "after" in the picture, and forget to look at the baseline condition as a control to determine if we really can assign causality correctly. The person who works non-stop and appears constantly stressed out and can't or won't take a vacation to just relax because they feel their absence would lead to disaster in the workplace, or who does take a vacation, but still doesn't relax, constantly calling into the office, checking on progress on a project, etc., might not be "unhappy" as a consequence of the job, but may have always been an unhappy person who constantly works because s/he doesn't know how to relax, which may have been the thing that led them to get promoted to that higher paying, higher responsibility job in the first place.
The problem that arises, though, is in determining if that person IS happy or unhappy. What exactly does that mean? Why would one assume that taking a vacation, for example, equates with happiness? If someone gets all their self-satisfaction from feeling needed and useful at work, and taking vacation leaves them feeling stressed out that they are not there, or perhaps they don't feel sufficiently confident about the skills of their coworkers and only anticipate returning to a big disaster after the vacation, maybe their happiness is more tied to being at work than being on a vacation.
I tend to think that if someone is truly miserable with their situation (job, marriage, location of residence, educational level, etc.) they are highly motivated to change their situation. They change employers, change careers, or up and quit and decide to figure out what else to do after they get out of the miserable situation. They get a divorce, or get married, or get remarried, or find a boyfriend or girlfriend, or dump a boyfriend or girlfriend. They move...out of their parents' house, out of the dumpy apartment, out of the bad neighborhood, to a new town, a new state, or back home from away. They take some classes...toward a degree, or to advance their career, or to change their career, or to learn a new hobby.
If someone complains a lot, and doesn't do anything to change their situation, I become more skeptical that their complaints are legitimate. Some people simply enjoy complaining, and sometimes it's just to temporarily let of steam, and once it's voiced, that minor annoyance is out of the way and they realize that overall, they are content with what they have.
