Not op, but I’d say it’s easy to guess why people care about numbers so much. Main reason is because it feels like making a statement and that feels good. It’s a tiny amount of effort for a bigger dopamine reward.

It’s just as easy to guess why people don’t care about them either. They don’t affect anything and can feel meaningless as a result. It just depends on the person

I kinda thought that was how most small towns worked. We got a couple big factories that take up a big chunk of the workforce here. They have a huge amount of power in controlling the wages for the town, which is always worrying. They pay the highest, but it’s still not very high