"Money can't buy happiness" was coined by someone who has never been truly poor.

The origin of that adage is a hypothesis about satisfaction that basically says that there are things that can make people unhappy or content, but never happy, some things that make people happy or content, but never unhappy and some things that can make people happy and unhappy (or just content).

Take a hotel room for example. You expect the room to be clean, a clean room won‘t make you happy, just content, but an unclean room will make you unhappy. Free minibar on the other hand is a benefit, it might make you happy, but you won’t be unhappy if you don‘t get it, you will still be content.

Meanwhile the size of the room goes both way, an uncomfortably small room can make you unhappy while a surprisingly large room might make you happy.

Applied to employee satisfaction, studies show that a too low salary is making your employees very unhappy, but once a certain level is reached, employees won‘t get more satisfied with further raises. It is one of those factors that only range from happy to content.

That has then been misinterpreted by managers to state that money is no motivator at all.

/r/Showerthoughts Thread