I don't think we are slaves to money. People with these thoughts in my opinion often live beyond their means.
Nothing changes.
Learning to live within your means and save money is one of the hardest things to do in life and it's worse they don't even teach money management in school (or not when I was in school) yet when you leave its bigger than needing algebra or whatever again.
My definition of wealth regardless of how much you earn is having enough money in the bank so when you go out for a meal with friends or family or whatever you never have to ask "how much is that" or worry about the price. You can just buy it, enjoy it and have a good time.
Some great points here.
Back many years ago in School we did economics ( as well as home economics = cooking ).
We were taught the basics of how the economy worked, how businesses worked, we even ran for 4 months a paper trading shares portfolio. This was long before the internet was a thing !
I taught myself to trade futures and options, in around 1992 I invested £1000 and withing 6 months this was worth just over $7500. My resources for this was newspaper and ceefax/teletext.
One of the first things they taught you in the military, was about opening and running a bank account.
I always remember the bank manager visiting the base saying; " as silly as this sounds, just because you have cheques in your cheque book, it does not mean you have enough money to cash them".
Finally, I left the military in 1989, I did 8 months pf odd jobs, including engineering and welding, then did 14 months of business studies.I set my first business up in October 1991.
I have never worked for anyone since then.
In my first year I turned over £120k all done by me, the sales, the admin and the delivering of goods.