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submitted 1 year ago by Grayox@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] smollittlefrog 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What is "enough"?

In many countries, your basic needs are already fully met no matter which job you do.

E.g. in Germany working minimum wage full time gets you way more money than you need.

Minimum wage full time gets you about 2160€ before tax, which will be about 1650€ after tax (and healthcare etc.).

You can easily pay for your basic needs for less than half of that (even when living alone). The rest you can use to buy upgrades, like a new phone etc.

Minimum wage workers in Germany are already wealthy.

But of course, if you'd ask the average German minimum wage worker, they'd claim to be poor.

They claim to be poor because they can not afford modern luxury. They can not afford to pay for expensive brands, they can not afford to eat in expensive restaurants.

They can not afford to be lavish.

Now imagine if every person in Germany could afford twice as much (something that happens multiple times in a lifetime). Would they stop considering themselves poor? No, their entitlement would simply rise accordingly (as we've seen again and again throughout the thousands of years of history).

You can not pay people "enough". People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.

The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.

this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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