As someone who has been both poor and relatively well off, the main thing is that you gain enormous stability and comfort from things like owning a home and having sufficient financial ability to choose what to do.
For example - "I choose to take the kids to school and then do some woodworking today".
The fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations aren't that great. The lack of slavery is.
Might "status" be a different thing than "wealth"? They are not unrelated in practice in our society, but I think the OP is thinking they are different things (I think I agree), and is making an argument about status specifically.
Status is being liked, respected, included, looked up to, followed, listened to. Which is a different category than having enough money to do things you want to do. One might lead to the other (in either direction), but some people can definitely have a lot of one and little of the other (also in either direction) as well.
Now, listing those "status" category things -- of course a person might want/need some of those things some of the time, having none of those things any of the time would be challenging, for sure. I don't think the OP's claim necessarily denies that either.
> The fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations aren't that great. The lack of slavery is.
I think that's the point, the former is all about status, but the real goal is not to show off but be relatively free, you still need money for that but that's not the same thing.
For example - "I choose to take the kids to school and then do some woodworking today".
The fancy cars, big houses, exotic vacations aren't that great. The lack of slavery is.