Because humans don’t care about absolute wealth they care about relative wealth. As long as someone else is working more there’s going to be pressure to keep up with them.
I assume 'absolute wealth' means some amount (or not) of property, assets, that one's content with? Not like I'll be happy with 100k in the bank no matter how much anyone else has - because that just doesn't make sense, it's inherently relative; to care about the absolute value we have to mean real goods.
So then I think it's just plainly not true? I think most people even want particular things, not to have the same or more things as others. To the extent that it's clichéd parenting, or associated with derogatory remarks like 'social climber', 'keeping up with the Jones', etc.
Certainly Instagram and 'influencer' culture in general acts against that, but it's not hard to find people eschewing it either.
