Wealth & Money Quote by Walter Annenberg

Annenberg’s line is a quiet defense of a very American kind of pleasure: the satisfaction of being consumed by work, then calling it freedom. He’s not romanticizing toil for its own sake; he’s reframing the optics. From the outside, the money-driven worker “appears to be slaving” - a word that nods to exploitation, monotony, even moral compromise. The pivot is the tell: “many actually enjoy every minute.” Enjoyment becomes a rebuttal to critique, a way to launder obsession into virtue.

The intent reads like a businessman’s corrective to the lazy caricature of the tycoon or striver. In Annenberg’s world, wealth isn’t just the outcome; it’s the game, the scoreboard, the daily adrenaline. The subtext is that ambition can be its own reward, and that outsiders often misread intensity as misery because they don’t share the same incentives or temperament.

Context matters. Annenberg came up through the era when corporate empire-building and media consolidation were treated as both civic contribution and personal conquest. For someone who lived inside that machinery - and benefited from it - the line also functions as self-justification: if the participants “enjoy every minute,” then the system can’t be that brutal, can it?

That’s the quote’s sharp edge. It captures how capitalism sells not only products but identities: the hustler who “loves the grind” isn’t merely working; he’s expressing a personality. The cultural trick is that pleasure, once invoked, becomes a shield against questions about power, inequality, and who gets to opt out.