Elon Musk once declared it “morally wrong and dumb” to criticize billionaires. But new research suggests many people around the world would disagree.
In a sweeping cross-cultural study spanning 20 nations, psychologists found that people in economically equal and wealthier countries tend to judge extreme wealth as morally wrong. The study, published in PNAS Nexus by researchers Jackson Trager and Mohammad Atari, offers a rare psychological dissection of why some view excessive wealth not just as unfair but as morally corrupt.
Curiously, the researchers argue, this condemnation stems less from concerns about fairness or inequality and more from an unexpected place: a gut-level feeling that too much money is simply… impure.
How much is too much?
The combined wealth of the top 10 richest people in the world is approximately $1.9 trillion. According to some estimates, that’s comparable to the wealth of the poorest half of the planet’s total population. Is this morally acceptable? It’s not a simple question, and we probably all have our own answers. Trager and Atari wanted to get a large-scale picture of what people think.
They surveyed over 4,300 people across countries, including Switzerland, Egypt, Russia, the U.S., and Chile. They asked participants how morally wrong they felt it was to have “too much money,” without specifying a dollar amount.
The first finding is that, on average, most people didn’t find great wealth especially immoral. But the variation between countries was striking.
People in egalitarian, affluent countries (like Belgium and Switzerland) were far more likely to judge excessive wealth as immoral. In contrast, people in countries with greater inequality and lower income levels (like Peru and Argentina) were much more accepting.
But it’s not simply about inequality, and it’s not just about resenting the rich. In fact, the correlation between moral judgments on inequality and billionaires was weak. Someone might view inequality as wrong but still admire a billionaire, or vice versa. Instead, researchers found other moral characteristics at play.
The moral foundations of being filthy rich
The researchers used a well-established framework called Moral Foundations Theory. This approach proposes that humans have innate, modular foundations that guide moral judgments. These foundations are not absolute rules, but rather serve as building blocks that are shaped and prioritized differently across individuals and cultures. The six core moral functions are: care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority, and purity.
Unsurprisingly, concerns about equality were strong predictors of opposition to excessive wealth. But something else stood out, which researchers weren’t expecting: purity.
Purity relates to the idea that humans possess a deep-seated aversion to contamination and degradation, both physical and spiritual. People who score high on purity tend to see the world through a lens of cleanliness vs. contamination. This is often (but not always) linked to religion, self-control, and a dislike for decadence.
In this study, purity consistently predicted disapproval of excessive wealth, even after controlling for religious belief, political ideology, and views on inequality.
“To many, possession of excessive wealth may be disgusting and unnatural due to the degrading nature of excess, suggesting there is more
of a psychological truth to the term filthy rich than merely being an American metaphor,” the researchers write.
Meanwhile, those who valued proportionality — believing people should be rewarded in proportion to their efforts — were more likely to defend the wealthy. The same was true for those who scored high on loyalty and authority, often associated with political conservatism.
Age and socioeconomic status also played roles. Older people and those with higher status were more likely to see excessive wealth as morally troubling. Notably, religiosity had little impact, suggesting that moral views about money may be more cultural than spiritual.
This matters more than ever
This study comes at a time when the richest 1% owns vast amounts of global wealth and billionaires are launching space rockets while others can’t afford rent. As debates about wealth taxes and economic justice intensify, understanding how people think about wealth — and why they judge it — matters more than ever.
The study shows that the morality of money is not universal. It’s shaped by context — economic systems, cultural values, and local inequality all play roles. For example, people in Switzerland and Ireland, countries with high GDP and low inequality, showed strong disapproval of excess. Those in more unequal nations like Chile or Nigeria were more likely to accept it.
This supports the idea that people adapt their moral views to fit their surroundings. In wealthier nations, the social costs of hoarded wealth — like visible homelessness or climate impacts — may be harder to ignore.
But the backlash against billionaires may be rooted in something even deeper: an ancient discomfort with excess. Too much of anything (even something “good” like money) can feel unnatural, unclean, or immoral.
As societies continue to grapple with inequality, the question may not be how much is too much, but how our moral compass deals with this excess.
The study was published in PNAS Nexus.
