What might the happiest possible society look like?

Our modern society is not really focused around maximizing the happiness of everyone. The US Constitution says that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness there is no guarantee. Everyone will of course have there own ideas and framework about how this might work and if it is even possible.

To maximize happiness, I will use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a reference for what is necessary for people to continue to exist, and although it doesn't guarantee happiness, it is key that all things are done for people to be able to find happiness. Thus we can create a society where everyone who wants it can find happiness out of their own free will, and to be sad would require effort.

At the bottom we have physical needs, food, water, and safety. To satisfy these needs, we simply need to provide these things, and society has for the most part done that. To eliminate poverty, we would need some form of wealth redistribution. If we gave everyone the same amount communisticaly, we may run into issues if the average wealth is insufficient to cover everyone's needs, and then no one wins. There is however, an easy way to get around this: addition of classes. Suppose we made just two classes, and each got the same pay as everyone else in that same class. Everyone in the lower class would get only enough to cover basic needs and no less, and everyone in the upper class would have a maximum income cap based on the point at which wealth no longer generates additional happiness.

We can solve for the maximum number of people in each class using these equations:

Total wealth(GDP) = $(upper) Y + $(lower) X
Population = Y + X

For the US, this is ~ $19,000,000,000,000 = ($80,000) Y + ($12,500 ) X
327,000,000 = Y + X
=> Y = 220,925,926, X = 106,074,074‬

So about 2/3 people can be in the upper class using this 2 class system.

Now before you destroy your keyboard, let me explain why I think this system might be better.

Everyone in the upper class has it made, but they are all approximately equal to everyone else in their class. Psychologically, this is extremely good. One of the things that makes people sad is comparing themselves to others who are more successful because it makes them feel inadequate.

But what of the lower class? Won't they all be sad for this same reason? Not so fast! We can actually organize people in a clever way to make it so that large portions of the lower class are happy anyways!

The only way for people to move from the lower to the upper class is if society can generate additional wealth. There are two tools which can facilitate this: Automation and Entrepreneurship. So in this way, the lower class will slowly evaporate over time as long as GDP outpaces population growth.

There have been multiple studies that show that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals, and the reason often cited is that liberals believe the table is rigged against them, while conservatives believe that the wealth they get is what they deserve. A similar mechanism might be used in this model to load as many people into the lower class who are likely to be self-starters and everyone who doesn't need wealth to feel happy, as well as criminals.