Personal growth then leads to taking on more responsibilities. Sometimes that leads to a promotion, other times it leads to better job opportunities. Either way, this contributes to salary increases.
as they say "time is money", except that while you can certainly earn more money, there's no earning ownership of your time as a wage worker until you're able to eject yourself entirely from it (whether through retirement, death, or taking your turn as the owner for workers).
I agree with your sentiment but this part is false. Everyone has a boss, even business owners; the boss just becomes the customer instead of a manager. Becoming an owner doesn’t release you.
Yes, you always have choices. Consequences are not very different.
Moving a family of four from one 1700 sq ft house to another is not easy nor cheap, no matter how it's done. Turning down a customer, assuming your business can afford it, is far easier.
On a different topic, people working abroad on crappy visa schemes made their own bed. I'm pretty happy I refused an offer to come to US on some crappy visa many years ago. Fuck that. The sooner system fails, the better.
But for more money.
E.g if being more productive got you a $100k/yr more raise, or a $100k larger bonus, then it’s definitely not selling your time for the same money. If this compounds, like it does nicely in many industries (tech, finance, general “business” of really any kind), then your productivity now is worth real money in the future.
It also feels nice to, ya know, get things done. You don’t have to be an extreme pessimist about the good things you bring to the world because you don’t get 100% of the profit.