C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite
For all of the possible values of human society, one and only one is truly sovereign, truly universal, truly sound, truly and completely acceptable goal of man in America. That goal is money...

David G. Myers - The funds, friends, and faith of happy people
A survey conducted by the University of California and the American Council on Education on 250,000 new college students found that their main reason for attending college was to gain material wealth. From the 1970s to the late 1990s, the percentage of students who stated that their main reason for going to college was to develop a meaningful life philosophy dropped from more than 80% to about 40%, while the purpose of obtaining financial gain rose from about 40% to more than 75%.

Greed is the insatiable desire for material gain, especially money, land, social value, status or power. Materialism is the number one philosophy in the western world. It is contrasted by spirituality or morality. More of one thing means less of another...

Shirley Chisholm said: When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.* With the rise of materialism comes the decline of morality. People high on materialism are more likely to engage in unethical business behaviors and manipulate people for their own purposes.* Poor people don't have enough money, but people with lots of money never have enough either*. For poor people it is need, for rich people it is greed. Christmas is a good example of materialism overshadowing moral values. Many sheeple parents in the western world systematically lie to their own children in the name of a tradition they don't really believe in, let alone understand, and which is supposed to have high moral values. Instead of learning moral values these children learn how to lie to their own future children. Many parents defend their lies making themselves believe that they have "good intentions". The road to hell is paved with good intentions *. By keeping this corrupt tradition alive they support the material system imposed on them by the power elite who of course make profit by it. Christmas has become a symbol of consumerism and materialism.

C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite
Wealth not only tends to perpetuate itself, but... tends also to monopolize new opportunities for getting 'great wealth.' ... The accumulation of advantages at the very top parallels the vicious cycle of poverty at the very bottom.

Thomas Piketty wrote a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century * in which he outlines that we are heading into a future dominated by inherited wealth as capital concentrates into fewer hands, giving the very rich an ever-greater power over government, politics and society. Paul Krugman further explains that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy, a society of inherited wealth: Patrimonial Capitalism.* One cannot be rich unless others are relatively poor. The rich get richer while the rest suffers the consequences. George Bernard Shaw said: The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.* In 2014 the group of millionaires numbering less than 1% of all adults owned 44% of global wealth.* In 2016 Newsweek reported that 62 people held more wealth than half the world's population combined in 2015; that number was 388 people in 2010.** In 2017 the world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population.** The facts speak for themselves.

Stefanie de Laat - Are we caught up in an endless cycle of acquiring things in search of happiness?
The positive effect of both materialism as well as greed on subjective well-being might be short term. It is suggested that on long term materialistic and greedy people experience lower levels of subjective well-being or which doesn't lead to an increase in happiness.

Ashley Whillans - Harvard psychologist: The toxic money mindset that even millionaires have—and how to break out of it
Research shows that after we make enough money to pay our bills and save for the future, making more does little for our happiness. If anything, once people start making a lot of money, they begin to think they’re doing worse in life, because they become obsessed with comparing themselves to those who are richer. Even multimillionaires make the mistake of believing that money, and not time, will enrich their lives. *

Materialism is negatively associated with life satisfaction.* There is a very robust correlation between socioeconomic status and health. High levels of inequality in wealth and income produce greater levels of unhappiness.* Major depression is the number 1 psychological disorder in the western world.* Materialism and greed are destructive for the planet and human well-being, but it's rampant in this sick and immoral world.