[TheOtherHobbes]

Somewhat. It's not a binary. At the lower end you absolutely need a minimum level of pay just to survive. As you get higher up the earnings tree it becomes more and more about status and less and less about actual spending.

In the middle you get people on mid-six figures complaining about the cost of housing and school fees - which is an interesting mix of humble status bragging and genuine concern about limited disposable income.

By the time you get to billionaires it's a childish status pissing contest with numbers that are almost meaningless in real terms.