In an ideal world, nobody's work would be just about the money. People could pursue excellence in what they do, take pride in achievement, and derive meaning from knowing that their work improved the lives of others.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
People value and spend their money more wisely when they acquire it by their own efforts - also known as work.
Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.
The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.
There is no excellence without labor. One cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness.
We live in the kind of society where, in almost all cases, hard work is rewarded.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.
We package everything as a product so we can derive income from it. Then we can occupy ourselves with higher-order psychological lifestyle things. This is a very new issue. Money still matters, but other factors have joined the status game - like how interesting, how meaningful your work is.
I believe that we have been doing this not primarily to achieve riches or even honour, but rather because we were interested in the work, enjoyed doing it and felt very strongly that it was worthwhile.
If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.