> but i've had discussions with people who have explicitly told me they don't really care how good/bad things are, as long as they are better than others.

No question that mentality exists, I'll argue that it's a very small minority of eg millionaires in any society that hold such a view.

There are around 11 to 13 million (not including primary residence) millionaires in the US; or around 4.5% to 5% of the adult population. The typical millionaire in the US is worth about $3 to $4 million. While it's a very large group of people spread across the country, they do have a few things in common.

The majority acquired that status from working extremely hard for a very long time, usually either operating and or selling relatively small businesses with no more than between a few dozen up to a hundred employees, or slogging away for decades piling up invested wealth slowly over their lifetime.

The millionaire class in the US is numerically overwhelmingly dominated by those types of outcomes and has been since the industrial revolution.

Extreme wealth on the other hand obviously is concentrated in a few thousand persons with unusual outlier situations, usually around very large business concerns. My suspicion is that group is dramatically more likely to have a master of the universe mentality.

Most millionaires acquired it, largely, via inheritance, not hard work.

I grew up in an area where there were many millionaires. You would have been hard pressed to distinguish most of them from any blue collar worker they employed. They were all hard workers themselves, they generally drove vehicles no different to pretty much everyone else, they lived in houses much as most others in the area.

I went to school with their children and their wealth was not shown in any obvious way. We were all equal.

To maintain their wealth required long hours, hard work and generally being fair to everyone around them. Within the same area, we had people who didn't have the same level of wealth but considered themselves superior because they were lawyers, or bank managers or other professionals. These carried an air of distinction and superiority and many considered the "millionaires" as plebs.

One cannot generalise about any group based on some specific characteristic like money. Each of them is an individual and though some can and do take up airs, others do not. I have a son to whom I have lent money so that he can get ahead and he has always shown himself responsible, including paying me back. The way he is going, he will be a millionaire long before I am. I have another son to whom I will not lend any money to, as he has shown that he cannot handle the responsibility. They were both brought up the same way, only one took up the challenge to be financially proficient.

Different people will act and react in different ways and you cannot paint any group of people with the same brush.

Seems like a false dichotomy. For instance, Bill Gates' family was very well-off, but they never gave him a million bucks as an inheritance. What they did give him was private schooling, business connections, and computer time that allowed him to build a business and win a monopoly when everyone else was worried about getting a job.

That's true for most European countries, but not America.

Not challenging, just asking, do you have sources to back up your claim?

Social mobility is far lower in the US than in European countries.

> No question that mentality exists, I'll argue that it's a very small minority of eg millionaires in any society that hold such a view.

I'd say it's the majority of millionaires that I've met (all successful small business owners).

They all worked very hard for their wealth and built it over a lifetime, as you said, but every single one of them relished screwing over others and being better than others. They worked like they did for their egos, and not much else. And all of them are virulently committed to making sure they stay on top, even if the top is sinking.

I know there are plenty of people who want to feel like the masters of the universe. But the bulk of the upper class in the US (the economic class) is composed of professionals like doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, engineers, etc. If you take a broad sampling of those people, most of them are in it more for the nice houses, cars, vacations, interesting work, social esteem, and freedom.

This seems to be a confluence of social class and economic class. Those who are concerned about economic class don't care about the subjugation part. Social class, particularly of the hereditary kind, may be concerned with it.