If you’ve got enough Benjamins (translation for readers over age 25: $100 bills), you can buy a Pink Splendor Barbie complete with crystal jewelry and a bouffant gown sewn with 24-karat threads. To dress a “living doll,” Victoria’s Secret offers its Million Dollar Miracle Bra, with more than 100 carats of real diamonds.
Obviously, many companies love to sell to affluent, upscale markets. This focus often makes sense, because these consumers have the resources to spend on costly products (often with higher profit margins). However, it is a mistake to assume that we should place everyone with a high income into the same well-lined bucket. After all, social class involves a lot more than absolute income. It is also a way of life, and factors including where they got their money, how they got it, and how long they have had it significantly affect affluents’ interests and spending priorities.
Despite our stereotype of rich people living it up, the typical millionaire is a 57-year-old man who is self-employed, earns a median household income of $131,000, has been married to the same wife for most of his adult life, has children, has never spent more than $399 on a suit or more than $140 for a pair of shoes, and drives a Ford Explorer. (The humble billionaire investor Warren Buffett comes to mind.) Interestingly, many affluent people don’t consider themselves to be rich. One tendency researchers notice is that they indulge in luxury goods while pinching pennies on everyday items—buying shoes at Neiman Marcus and deodorant at Wal-Mart, for example.[67]
To generalize, people who are used to having money use their fortunes a lot differently. Old money families (the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Fords, and so on) live primarily on inherited funds. Merely having wealth is not sufficient to achieve social prominence in these circles. You also need to demonstrate a family history of public service and philanthropy, and tangible markers of these contributions often enable donors to achieve a kind of immortality (Rockefeller University, Carnegie Hall, or the Whitney Museum). “Old money” consumers distinguish among themselves in terms of ancestry and lineage rather than wealth. And, they’re secure in their status: In a sense, they have trained their whole lives to be rich.
Pity the poor nouveau riches who actually earn their money; many suffer from status anxiety. They monitor the cultural environment to ensure that they do the “right” thing, wear the “right” clothes, get seen at the “right” places, use the “right” caterer, and so on. In major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, some people have taken to wearing pajamas in public as a way to flaunt their newfound wealth. As one consumer explained, “Only people in cities can afford clothes like this. In farming villages, they still have to wear old work clothes to bed.”[68]
Nouveau or not, we all have a deep-seated tendency to evaluate ourselves, our professional accomplishments, our appearance, and our material well-being relative to others. The rise of a mass-class market means that many luxury products have gone down-market; once-exclusive designer names appear on the bodies, homes, and garages of many consumers who used to only look at them longingly in magazines or on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Does this mean we no longer yearn for status symbols? Hardly. The market continues to roll out ever-pricier goods and services, from $130,000 Hummers and $12,000 mother-baby diamond tennis bracelet sets to $600 jeans, $800 haircuts, and $400 bottles of wine. Although it seems that almost everyone can flout a designer handbag (or at least a counterfeit version with a convincing logo), our country’s wealthiest consumers employ 9,000 personal chefs, visit plastic surgeons, and send their children to $400-an-hour math tutors.
The social analyst Thorstein Veblen first discussed the motivation to consume for the sake of consuming at the turn of the twentieth century. For Veblen, we buy things to inspire envy in others through our display of wealth or power. Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to refer to people’s desires to provide prominent visible evidence of their ability to afford luxury goods. The material excesses of his time motivated Veblen’s outlook; he wrote in the era of the “Robber Barons,” where the likes of J. P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, and William Vanderbilt built massive financial empires and flaunted their wealth as they competed to throw the most lavish party.
Sounds like they really lived it up back in the old days, right? Well, maybe the more things change, the more they stay the same: The recent wave of corporate scandals involving companies such as Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco infuriated many consumers when they discovered that some top executives lived it up even as other employees were laid off. One account of a $1 million birthday party that the chief executive of Tyco threw for his wife is eerily similar to a robber baron shindig: The party reportedly had a gladiator theme and featured an ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David with vodka streaming from his penis into crystal glasses.
The rich are different.