[wac]

So this blogger has pointed out 2 problems with a single Guardian quote. The first point doesn't make sense to me as it seems to argue that the Guardian's "be as satisfied with" means the same thing as "increase satisfaction".

The second point seems to me to be almost as poor. The blogger claims that the 40% more money claim from the Guardian is bogus since the footnote clearly shows that their calculation is in absolute Euro terms not percentages. However if you read the next sentence of the footnote:

"Full compensation for commuting one hour (one way), compared with no commuting, is estimated to require an additional monthly income of approximately 515 Euro or 40 percent of the average monthly wage. This valuation implies that the time spent commuting is worth 1.6 times the hourly wage or the average compensation for working. [...]" (Page 17, Footnote 14)

It seems that the research authors themselves argue that their research implies commuting is worth a multiple of hourly wage. Thus we easily verify that the weighted commuting hours (1.6*2) is 40% of the normal (8 hour) working day.

The Guardian could have been more accurate by adding a "average" to their quote, but I think that this is implied by the context anyway.

[hyperpape]

It's also a common assumption in economics that as your income increases, the amount that you value your time (in monetary terms) will also increase (thus in a lot of urban areas, living close to your work is very expensive, and outer areas are cheaper). It would be nice to see get empirical confirmation by seeing how the "cost" of the commute is different for people with higher incomes, but it's not like this is a strange claim.