Five tiers of material aspiration: Necessities, Leisure, Comfort, Social Status, and Power. The sane place to "get off" is somewhere in the middle of the Comfort tier.
Leisure is freedom-to (travel, be educated), Comfort is freedom-from (housework, annoyances), and Status is mostly about the ability to maintain maxed-out Comfort (about $2-3M per year, post-tax) without doing anything of value, i.e. being able to get all that just for being "special" (the narcissist's dream). Power is the ability to dick up and down peoples' Status on a whim, because a lot of people who've maxed out the other tiers get bored and need something to do.
Of course, these tiers are fuzzy. Most of us would find business-class travel to be enough Comfort, but some people require a private jet. Also, people with severe psychological issues (which can manifest as greed, which is slightly more glamorous than crippling panic attacks, I guess) will never be comfortable, which is why they soar into the Status and Power tiers but are (internally speaking) still trying to achieve basic Comfort.
Leisure is freedom-to (travel, be educated), Comfort is freedom-from (housework, annoyances), and Status is mostly about the ability to maintain maxed-out Comfort (about $2-3M per year, post-tax) without doing anything of value, i.e. being able to get all that just for being "special" (the narcissist's dream). Power is the ability to dick up and down peoples' Status on a whim, because a lot of people who've maxed out the other tiers get bored and need something to do.
Of course, these tiers are fuzzy. Most of us would find business-class travel to be enough Comfort, but some people require a private jet. Also, people with severe psychological issues (which can manifest as greed, which is slightly more glamorous than crippling panic attacks, I guess) will never be comfortable, which is why they soar into the Status and Power tiers but are (internally speaking) still trying to achieve basic Comfort.