[rofo1]

> All success is simply relative to someone else – usually those around you. That’s important for spending money, because for so many people the question of whether you’re buying nice things is actually, “are your things nicer than other peoples’ things?” The question of whether your home is big enough is actually, “is your home bigger than your neighbor’s?”

This is pathological behavior. Unfortunately, it's ingrained in humans. We are improving the world in a faster-than-ever rate, and the objective difference between wealth classes was never lower than it is now. Not even remotely close. (see the book "Factfulness" for some interesting data)

Yet due to the way the world stopped "being huge", due to social networks and everyone being "approachable" (low degree of separation or whatever), the level of envy is at absolute maximum. This problem was always present in humans and is perhaps the primary reason (well, if we can make the jump or at least connect envy to evolutionary pressure for procreation) we have achieved so much in this world. Not knowing when is "enough" is unsolvable problem, even though philosophers wrote thousands of books on this topic.

People cannot stop being envious even if it leads to unhappiness, almost always.

For myself, if I don't have to worry about bills, buying healthy food, having shelter and I don't have to work 14 hours a day, I consider myself on par with anyone in the world money-wise.