It has been estimated that Queen Elizabeth the Second has made a pertinent comment on the weather on 245,015 separate occasion to perfect strangers, all of whom remembered the exact comment all their lives ... if a random and arguably inaccurate estimate if the impending climate by one overpaid human being in a flower hat can bring a large part of remembered joy to one underpaid human being in a flower hat, well, the sources of happiness on this planet are almost inexhaustible, aren't they?
Paul Cox' Man of Flowers (1983), as quoted by the late, lamented and incomparable Jay Scott in Midnight Matinees.
Upper bound of utility functions? It only works for "underpaid" human beings (who haven't yet reached the bound).
Posted by: reason | June 12, 2009 at 05:16 AM
This might make a good submission for the Journal of Political Economy's back page.
Posted by: Jack | June 12, 2009 at 11:17 AM
Another example of how things that we think will make us happier, e.g. higher incomes, usually don't. Robert Frank (I think) has a really interesting example of why commuting makes people miserable that goes something along these lines: people think 'if I just move an hour of out town, I can get this great big house that will make me really happy.' So they do. But after a year or so they get used to the great big house, and it fills up with stuff anyways. So the house doesn't bring them additional happiness.
The pain of commuting lingers, unfortunately,
The flower hat example also suggests that there are inexhaustible sources of agony, e.g. ugly hats.
Posted by: Frances Woolley | June 15, 2009 at 05:48 PM