There is little surprise that Bernie Sanders in his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, has blamed unfettered capitalism for an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality. The Vermont Senator recently came up with a radical idea: the U.S. government should confiscate 100% of any money that Americans make above $999 million. “I think people can make it on $999 m. I think that they can survive just fine,” he said.
But who says that having money is just for “survival”? Does not money buy many things? Take “happiness” for instance. Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, Economics Nobel laureates in 2002 and 2015, respectively, hypothesised in 2010 that happiness increased steadily with income up to an annual income of $75,000, but that there was a monetary “happiness plateau” beyond that point.
Matt Killingsworth of the University of Pennsylvania, however, found no evidence of such a plateau. Well-being improves with money, according to his 2021 study. Recently, in an “adversarial collaboration,” Kahneman, Killingsworth, and Barbara Mellers reanalysed the experience sample data and discovered that the flattening pattern only affected 20% of the population, who were the least happy. One could certainly argue that by “happiness” they mean “well-being”.
