Interesting how your parents have such archetypal responses. I kind of feel that it's "they're both right" but to go meta here, it's really a question of "what would motivate me to be a productive employee?". For some, it's respect in the terms of compensation. For others the reward needs to be from within (in addition to external compensation).

From a management point of view, this is instructive - each employee is different and have different (vector of) motivations.