Wrong Question, Friend: Why 'How Much Did You Make?' Is Killing Our Humanity

"How Much Did You Make?" — The Wrong Question for a Broken World

In a world obsessed with profit margins, net worth, and revenue charts, it’s become disturbingly normal to reduce people — especially entrepreneurs and creators — to one metric: “How much did you make?”

If someone asks you that as their opening line, don’t answer. Instead, slap the question — not the person — with a better one. Wake them up. They’re trapped in a mental prison built by generations of industrial-era conditioning, glorified by social media, and reinforced by empty success porn.

Ask them back:

• What was your role in keeping your coworkers sane this year?

• How did you contribute to making your community more compassionate?

• What did you do to help your country move toward sanity — not just prosperity?

• How much did you give instead of just make?*

The Problem Isn't Money — It's Worshipping It

We’ve built a world where wealth equals wisdom, and where the size of your bank account supposedly reflects the depth of your impact. But how many of the richest people have created workplaces filled with anxiety, burnout, and silent suffering?

We are asking the wrong questions, measuring the wrong metrics, and celebrating the wrong heroes.

A society that only asks, “How much did you make?” is a society that's asleep at the wheel.

Real Impact Is Measured in Sanity

Let’s shift the focus:

• A leader should be measured by how many lives they stabilized, not just how many jobs they created.

• A founder’s success should be judged by how well they humanized work, not how fast they scaled.

• A country’s progress should be tracked by how sane and sovereign its citizens feel, not just GDP growth.

Because right now, we’re seeing nations on paper that are “thriving” — yet their people are exhausted, anxious, addicted, and lonely. That's not success. That's dysfunction with good PR.

The New Questions of Value

Let’s start asking better questions — future-facing, human-centric ones:

• What did you protect that can’t be priced?

• Whose mental health improved because of your leadership?

• What toxic systems did you help dismantle?

• Who felt seen, heard, and respected because of your work?

That’s the kind of wealth that doesn’t just survive a recession — it survives history.

A Call to Wake Up

So the next time someone leads with, “How much did you make?”, don’t feed the algorithm of shallow thinking. Look them in the eye and say:

“Wrong question, friend. Here’s what actually matters…”

Then flip the mirror. Turn the conversation from money to meaning, from profit to purpose, from ego to ecosystem. That’s how we detox the brainwashed. That’s how we build a world that’s not just richer — but saner.