Why You Feel Poor Even When You're Not

Would you rather earn $50,000 while everyone around you earns $25,000, or $100,000 while everyone earns $200,000? When Harvard researchers asked this, about half of the people picked less money, just to be ahead. You probably have hot water, a fridge and a computer in your pocket, so why do you still feel poor at the end of the month? We look at the Easterlin paradox, the capuchin monkeys who threw their cucumbers back, the brain scanners in Bonn, the salary database that made a whole workforce miserable, the lottery that pushed neighbors into bankruptcy, the real story behind "keeping up with the Joneses", and why your brain keeps score against people you have never met. Chapters: 0:00 Two worlds, one choice 0:55 What we all believe about feeling poor 1:27 Two very angry monkeys 2:10 Your brain in a scanner 2:45 Neighbors as negatives 3:04 The salary database 3:49 When your neighbor wins the lottery 4:33 Keeping up with the Joneses 5:19 TV gave us a new street 5:45 The screen in your pocket 5:56 The scorekeeper in your head 6:32 Zoom out: the whole planet 6:56 How feeling poor actually works 7:40 The twist: time has no scoreboard Sources: Sara Solnick & David Hemenway, "Is more always better? A survey on positional concerns", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (1998) Richard Easterlin, "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence" (1974) Sarah Brosnan & Frans de Waal, "Monkeys reject unequal pay", Nature (2003) Klaus Fliessbach et al., "Social Comparison Affects Reward-Related Brain Activity in the Human Ventral Striatum", Science (2007) Erzo Luttmer, "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being", Quarterly Journal of Economics (2005) David Card, Alexandre Mas, Enrico Moretti & Emmanuel Saez, "Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction", American Economic Review (2012) Peter Kuhn, Peter Kooreman, Adriaan Soetevent & Arie Kapteyn, "The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery", American Economic Review (2011) Sumit Agarwal, Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnick, "Peers' Income and Financial Distress: Evidence from Lottery Winners and Neighboring Bankruptcies", Review of Financial Studies (2020) Arthur R. Momand, "Keeping Up with the Joneses" comic strip (1913) Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) Juliet Schor, "The Overspent American" (1998) Charles Schwab, Modern Wealth Survey (2025) Pew Research Center, "A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality" (2015) Figures are rounded and some comparisons are simple illustrations. This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. #money #psychology #personalfinance