When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

I've considered that at some point I would upgrade from my $3,500 ATC P1 Pro amp to a $6,500 Parasound JC-5 amp. To me both of these are in the sweet spot of their price range. I can't imagine spending more in my 9 ft by 12 ft listening room. I imagine the ultra high dollar systems are how extremely wealthy people try to impress (and poke fun at) other extremely wealthy people. Not that I wouldn't like to have a system like that myself. I'm imagining a similar scenario where Oprah (or some other billionaire) calls her friends from her yacht and ask them if they're enjoying their weekend on their 80 ft "dinghy" and then scoffs "What yours didn't even come with a helicopter?"

I would think it depends on a designer's ability to resource and buy parts for less to build an amp at a reasonable price. For example some well established companies like Audio Research and Conrad Johnson buy parts in bulk and pass on the savings to their customers. So this could be true that just cause an amp cost more doesn't mean it sounds better. No savy businessman would spend forty thousand dollars on something that loses a lot of its value once purchased, only a rich audiophile would do so

For some audiophiles the Placebo effect cannot be controlled and will make an amp sound better if it is expected to sound better. Cable manufactures are very dependent upon the Placebo effect due to besides too high capacitance for some cartridges, their cables do not sound much different than other cables (spaghetti size cheap cables are excluded).

You do not have to be wealthy to buy a $40K amp. I just started a second full time job to maybe buy a $35K amp in 2023. Priorities.