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Conspicuous consumption persists today. But just as the patricians of classical times changed their habits once the masses gained the ability to copy them, so too have modern American elites recoiled from accumulating mere goods now that globalisation has made them affordable to the middle class. Instead, argues Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at the University of Southern California, in "The Sum of Small Things", they have begun consuming the fruits of "conspicuous production": socially worthy things like fair-trade coffee. They also emphasise "inconspicuous consumption", of services like education. Far from making the world more egalitarian, this shift, in particular, threatens to entrench modern elites' privileged position more effectively than the habits of their predecessors ever did.
[...] Rather than filling garages with flashy cars, the data show, today's rich devote their budgets to less visible but more valuable ends. Chief among them is education for their children: the top 10% now allocate almost four times as much of their spending to school and university as they did in 1996, whereas for other groups the figure has hardly budged. They also invest heavily in domestic services such as housekeepers, freeing up time that the less fortunate must spend on chores.
Rather than frittering away that precious leisure time on frivolities, as Veblen's leisure class did, they devote it to enriching experiences, like attending the opera, holidaying in far-off lands and working out at fancy gyms. Their children, by tagging along and thus absorbing this "cultural capital", develop the sophistication needed to win admission to selective universities, vastly increasing the odds that they will form the next generation's elite.
The rich also throw lavish birthday parties for their dogs.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:20AM (1 child)
However, when it comes to the rich buying an education for their children such that the old boys' club does its magic and keeps doors open, I don't think there's anything new about that. Where did Kennedy get his education? Which one, I hear you ask. Doesn't matter, I reply - Harvard. Every fucking one. (Note, females are apparently trash in that family and don't deserve an education - ship them off to a convent, that's a much better idea.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 08 2017, @11:28PM
Yes, well, I have heard the argument that George the IInd must have been clever, because he went to both Yale and Harvard, as if his family connections and need to avoid Vietnam had nothing to do with it.
The ruling classes everywhere need exclusivity for their children, so that they can create the next generation of ruling class.