The whole thing about the "happiness/money metric" is incredibly misleading, because it doesn't touch upon what money really gets you. Happiness as an emotion m

The whole thing about the "happiness/money metric" is incredibly misleading, because it doesn'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'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 want to work on without having to worry about paying the rent, getting downsized, getting my pay cut, and all the rest. The idea that the artist that doesn'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't happier is absurd on its face.