Do you know a threshold earner?

Here’s just a small excerpt from a thought-provoking Economist article:

In an American Interest essay on income inequality, Tyler Cowen broached the subject of the “threshold earner”:

A threshold earner is someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more. If wages go up, that person will respond by seeking less work or by working less hard or less often. That person simply wants to “get by” in terms of absolute earning power in order to experience other gains in the form of leisure—whether spending time with friends and family, walking in the woods and so on. Luck aside, that person’s income will never rise much above the threshold.

Source: Work for post-materialists (The Economist)