Why Are People So Concerned About How Others Spend Their Money?

Charles1dad, thanks for the thoughtful reply.  If I read into what you  said a little, it seems to be the intent of the person that determines the validity of focusing on another person's money.  If so, I could not agree more.  However, I think reasonable people can also make valid value judgements on the spending habits of others.  For example, a person buys a $500k house and it's far and away the best house in a neighborhood with a median home value of $150k.  Another person spend $500k on a house that need that needs some TLC in a neighborhood with a median home value of $1.5 million.  Each homeowner could be completely happy with their purchases, but one made a smart real estate move and the other didn't.  To point that out shouldn't be out of bounds.

Money is often conflated as measure of happiness and worth. Money is how we keep score and value other's purchases, this is perhaps the one objective critique we have available to us.

The level of pleasure another derives from their purchases is not so easily measured by any other means than money. Money often seen as measure of man's worth, why would it not be used in judging other's audio equipment purchases.

@sns ,

"Money is often conflated as measure of happiness and worth. Money is how we keep score and value other's purchases, this is perhaps the one objective critique we have available to us."

Money is perhaps the easiest to understand yardstick we have by which to measure performance.

Unfortunately, although there is no doubt a loose correlation with between price and performance, it's not always an accurate one.

Even more unfortunately, all of the other yardsticks necessarily require considerably more thought and time.

Scanning technical data and deciphering complicated graphs which bring back unpleasant memories of high school mathematics is certainly not for everyone.

As we have seen over the past 18 months, there's an awful lot of people don't like to think. Research, for some is almost a dirty word.

So, as things stand, we should not be surprised to find that money/price remains the most commonly used yardstick for some time to come.

No doubt one that many purveyor of dubious goods will continue to seek to exploit.

That alone is a good enough reason for debate to flourish in forums such as this one.

To me, Money is a terrible measure of happiness and worth. There are unlimited extreme examples of terrible rich people and great poor people and vice versa.

As for the OP, I do believe it is envy and the current Borg mentality among some.

Example: Say the neighbor has a much better house.

Some people would work very hard to have just as good of a house. 
 

On the other hand, some other people would rather burn the neighbor’s house.