A controversial perspective is that the daily work routines of the wealthy and billionaires can, in many respects, be significantly more stressful than those of the average worker.

[Jonnyenglish]

Yes its not as straight forward and yes there are many workers that you could argue do more, but when your guiding and running large businesses and dealing with various people etc,

You may not be aware of this but stocks and shares can be sold and thereby converted to cash in the bank.

Do you realise the The Big Bang Theory is a AmAmerican sitcom , not a debate show.

Go and listen to The Moral Maze if you want to interesting debate .

So multi faceted.

Yes CEOs have a lot of responsibility and that doesn’t switch off after work hours, compared to e.g. a more manual job that you do the hard work in the hours but don’t bring it home. High compensation in part compensates for this “round the clock” responsibility.

But low wages for hard physical work and being in poverty adds so much stress to life so not easy to say CEOs will objectively be more stressed.

Then add in that mostly to become a CEO you go through so much personal and professional development that helps you learn to manage the stress - you’ve been in a similar challenging situation before and seen the resolution - so actually most don’t feel as much stress than a less experienced person would with the same decisions.

billionaires do not equal CEOs though.

I'd like to know this to , also which Wikipedia pages?
The idea of someone doing research and using Wikipedia as a foundation stone is really laughable.

The title was a bit like an essay.

There's a big difference between a 'wealthy' business owner and a billionaire.

Would you like MN to write your school essay for you, OP?

The job will be stressful

but they don’t need to continue it to survive

they have the network and infrastructure that most working people don’t

they don’t have the distractions that having a low income brings

their remuneration isn’t proportionate to the value they bring

so in short - you are wrong

I mean, it should be, shouldn’t it? If you are making that sort of money, you also probably employing 100s/1000s/millions of people, so your business is responsible for their livelihood as well.

I couldn’t handle that level of pressure or responsibility, no matter what the money.

I think it depends on the millionaire/billionaire. If self made I suspect they have/still do put it in long hours/years to build their business/brand and maybe have gotten into that habit and cannot relinquish control enough to stop. Then there will be the inherited wealth and whilst there could be hard grafters in that category I'd also be considering that there are many that are not.

The only people that think like that are the wealthy 😂 they have options that others would dream of! I have no sympathy for idiots

You mean they have others to blame when they fuck up? 😊

DH is in a v senior role in a large corporate. It’s mentally and emotionally demanding. He works extended hours is required to travel frequently.

People nearby to us are aware he earns a lot and don’t seem to see past the money and overlook how much it takes to earn that…it’s not worth it on many levels.

Family members work in very different sectors and don’t understand either of our roles and how work cannot always be left at work due to the nature of what we do.

Yes people work hard in many roles
Yes not all roles are equally valued and paid for - often see post on here where people are completely ignorant of labour market forces and in some instances how progressive tax works and how much earnings is paid in to the public purse.

Myself - I work much less hours but can have flash points that are very stressful and distressing to cope with - arguably my job is more important than DHs but I get paid way less than he does.

I think there are many people who work hard in different roles and experience stress in different forms. But on MN if you comfortable you can’t complain or it turns into what aboutary

Stress you choose, stress that has a reward is far better than the stress of working full time, pulling extra shifts and still not being able to feed your family

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have it in their power to make their workers' lives a lot more pleasant, comfortable and not shit up the environment in the process.

They choose not to. Shame on them.

But again you’re worker bees. It’s supposed to be stressful for you. You’re a cog in the machine.

Billionaires? No. Those big decisions are generally outsourced to management committees and such like - they can choose to the extent they are involved or not. One of the things that make things stressful is a lack of choice. Through work I do deal with a few ultra wealthy individuals and past a certain point of wealth, you are pretty indestructible financially (unless you've got it all plowed into one specific thing, but one thing wealthy people can afford is to pay people to tell them that that's a pretty stupid idea).

Wealthy but not ultra-rich - it depends on the role, I guess. I've no doubt being the head honcho of a company is stressful. Personally Ive found my work less stressful since being in senior management but I haven't been in the position where the business is going to shit and difficult decisions have to be made. I'm also still very much an employee so wouldn't really be making the difficult decisions, although I suspect would have an input.

However, I think you're conflating shareholders with CEOs and executive directors etc. Many of the uber wealthy people I know own a variety of shares in various companies but have little to nothing to do with the day to day management. They may attend AGMs, or indeed sit on the board of directors, but generally a shareholder does not = running the company.

sterling work OP, well done for pointing out this oft overlooked issue, people can be most insensitive to the suffering of the insanely wealthy sometimes, can’t they?

Just out of interest how much has the total number of jobs in America increased since Bezos and Musk went into business? Has Apple collapsed without Steve Jobs?

Everyone is replaceable in economic terms.

Do you think Elon Musk's daily roster of meetings, emails and phone calls is genuinely more taxing, stressful or difficult than a shift in one of his factories?

www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk

On the flip side, they have none of the direce and indirect financial worries that most people face.

They can use their wealth to optimise their lives for good mental and physical health. They are able to (doesnt mean they are necessarily) philanthropic. They can influence causes that they care about.

Who is to say that it is more stressful to run eg Amazon than a small indepent bookshop with 3 employees?

Why don’t you go outside and play on your new bike?

Well no idea about billionaires - I’m sure Beyoncé, who recently passed that milestone, has plenty who relieve her of much of the day to day stresses. But your average very high earner - yes I’d say their job is extremely stressful. Usually very high stakes - responsible not just for the bottom line but many others jobs.
My DH ran a large law firm in London, earned very good money but my god the amount of work and stress. We never went anywhere that he didn’t have one eye on his emails and a conference call scheduled. I said back in the day he could take a proper holiday because they couldn’t reach him, he countered that he wouldn’t be able to take one if he wasn’t contactable! It killed him - he died of a massive heart attack age 51.
But your ‘average’ worker may have a very stressful job too, and added stress of maybe not being able to pay certain bills every month, or wonder if they could afford to send a child to uni and the implications of that. And then they may not be considered average but there are jobs that are high stakes by definition: fire fighters, some doctors, Red Cross workers (in the field) etc. physical danger or psychological stress.
But I don’t think you’ll get an informed or fair debate by posting on here.

What strikes me most about this thread is not the individual comment

“Why don’t you go outside and play on your new bike?”

but what it reveals about the state of public discourse. When someone who has participated on a forum for years resorts to that level of dismissal, it exposes a deeper problem: people have forgotten how to debate without retreating into mockery the moment they feel intellectually uncomfortable.

In a Socratic sense, this thread is a case study in the failure of dialectic. Instead of engaging with arguments, testing assumptions, or clarifying definitions, participants default to:

• Ridicule instead of reasoning
• Status‑games instead of substance
• Emotional defensiveness instead of inquiry
• Performative one‑liners instead of genuine thought

Socrates would say that this is what happens when people believe they are wise but have never examined their own assumptions. The moment a topic becomes complex wealth, stress, labour, responsibility — the conversation collapses into ego protection. People stop listening. They stop questioning. They stop thinking. They lash out.

And the saddest part is that many of the people doing this are long‑term users who should know better. Years on a discussion platform should cultivate:

• intellectual humility
• curiosity
• the ability to separate ideas from identity
• the discipline to challenge arguments rather than people

Instead, the thread demonstrates how easily even experienced users abandon those virtues when confronted with a perspective they dislike.
This is not just a failure of manners. It is a failure of civic capability. A society cannot meaningfully debate economics, ethics, or policy if its members cannot tolerate discomfort or complexity without throwing rhetorical tantrums.
The thread becomes a mirror and the reflection is not flattering. It shows how many people are unprepared for real debate, not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack the habits of mind that make debate possible: patience, precision, self‑examination, and the willingness to be wrong.

If anything, the behaviour on display should prompt a question worthy of Socrates himself:
How can a community claim to value discussion when its members flee from discussion the moment it demands thought?
Until people confront that contradiction, threads like this will continue to devolve into childishness not because the topics are childish, but because the participants refuse to rise to the level the topics require.

point in case,