Kumiko Arikawa DB5

Barry Schwartz tries to convince us in “The Paradox of Choice” that living a more modest lifestyle would make us happier. The “us” Barry Schwartz and I refer to are people with too much money who live in western industrial affluent countries. If we use the CNBC article “From the ‘perfect’ salary to keeping up with the Joneses, here’s how money really affects your happiness” to give us context then we can assume that the hypothetical person Barry proposes would make anywhere beyond 80k -140k a year. The article says that money only increases happiness up to a certain point. In this Barry and the article synergize very well. Once you get to the point where your salary covers all of your basic needs then the emotional gains from the money diminish exponentially. We see evidence of this when the article brings up how “nine out of 10 people said they’d trade 23% of their future earnings to have a job with meaning.” These people have money, and they do not know what to do with it. Barry Schwarts would argue these people have too many choices weighing down their minds. The money people have amassed allows them to break all constraints they can perceive, and now they are inundated with choices. He compared these people to fish who somehow managed to break out of the fishbowl that they are confined to. I agree with Schwartz. While on the surface the idea of breaking constraints sounds satisfying, it neglects to take into consideration that a life without limitations and potentially infinite decisions are not something humans are evolved to deal with. The CNBC article also gets at this point but in a different way. They argue that once you earn beyond a certain amount, money only makes you feel better once you know that you are making more than your peers, and even then, only for a little while. I believe that this is because we as humans have a hard time conceptualizing money. Once you make beyond 120k a year then money just becomes a concept without meaning to your day-to-day life, and comparing yourself to your peers helps you recontextualize your money in a way that makes sense. Five hundred sixty-seven thousand, three hundred and forty-one dollars is an excellent way to pad out an essay for length, but it also is hard to imagine. Your eyes probably glazed over while reading it and I struggled to write it. If you can imagine what that money is like, then how would an extra 30k complicate your life? It will give you more choices that require more effort to make. “Should I take house A which has a dining room 10% bigger than house B? But house B is 7 minutes closer to work. Which will make me happier?” Ben would say neither will make you happy as long as you have to choose, and I agree.