It's really a lot more than this. Top earners (which is a narrower group than a full quintile, but just bear with me) are producing huge value for their fellow

It's really a lot more than this. Top earners (which is a narrower group than a full quintile, but just bear with me) are producing huge value for their fellow man, which is certainly more interesting than hourly work and can be addicting or at least very satisfying. There are also huge incentives to overwork yourself if you're specialized and very knowledgeable, because the coordination costs of finding someone else capable of sharing the load and then doing all the delegating, meeting, review, etc. can be extreme. If you're working for yourself on some earlier stage ventures, it may take you 35 hours of work just to keep the business running; in that case working 50 hours vs. 40 triples your 'productive' time. And on and on. >One way to make more money is to work more. In these discussions it's worth remembering the second order effects of hours worked on pay. The first order effect is that an hourly rate multiplied by more hours is a higher number. But if you're hourly, working long hours puts more of your time in overtime in any official hourly sort of situation. More importantly, it means that you're getting good at your job at an uncommonly high rate, and you're the person who's always around, who knows more and is getting things done. It's hard to promote someone else in this scenario. And for the person working, it's hard to not quickly outgrow the job in this way. Finally, an analogy: my brother spends way more of his time playing basketball than I do. It's not that I can get all the basketball I need done in 20 minutes a week whereas it takes him 5 hours. I just suck at basketball, so I don't care to play.