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Luke Harold Miles's avatar

Intuitively, doesn't it matter whether you're at the 80th percentile and the folks at the 90th percentile make double your income, or they make $5 more than you? Like, even if I'm the lowest ranked employee in the company, if I make close to what the CEO makes, then I'll feel alright.

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Nelson Billing's avatar

With hindsight, and thinking about why stress and satisfaction might exist biologically, this isn't surprising. Robert Sapolsky explores this a bunch in the later chapters of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, from the perspective of how stress impacts health outcomes across one's lifetime and how status plays a huge role in that. He also comes to the conclusion that wealth/income is a minor piece of the puzzle-- mostly important at the extreme ends of the spectrum.

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