The whole thing about the &quot;happiness&#x2F;money metric&quot; is incredibly misleading, because it doesn&#x27;t touch upon what money really gets you. Happiness as an emotion might (for some people) trail off after a certain point, but that should be considered irrelevant. Money buys you safety, freedom, and the ability to take risks; those things aren&#x27;t going to show up in any kind of happiness study. If I had a serious amount of money, that would give me the freedom to work on things <i>I</i> want to work on without having to worry about paying the rent, getting downsized, getting my pay cut, and all the rest.<p>The idea that the artist that doesn&#x27;t have to spend their life working in a coffee shop to fund their art or that the software dev that would rather write FLOSS all day rather than take on boring contract gigs isn&#x27;t <i>happier</i> is absurd on its face.