It is a paradox of material wealth that the more you own, the more you must spend to prove your worth. The disgraced former boss of Northern Rock might have grown a beard and taken to wearing jeans in his unemployment, but he’s yet to trade in his £60,000 BMW X5 for a lower-key motor. A man that earns £750,000 a year has to drive something ostentatious - he’d be letting himself down otherwise. It’s difficult to imagine what sort of car Bob Diamond, head of Barclays Investment, drives with an annual £21 million pay packet.
The incomes and lifestyles of the new super rich are moving so far beyond the common version of reality, that they have finally broken one of the oldest social models in modern history - Thorstein Veblen’s Theory Of The Leisure Class.
Back in 1899, Veblen observed that people, rich and poor alike, attempt to impress others by displaying the things that they own. The middle and lower classes are constantly appropriating the status symbols of their betters as a means of social mobility. And the upper classes are forever upgrading their consumer habits to distance themselves from the plebs. This game of cat and mouse is the bedrock of modern advertising practice. And it sustains the momentum of consumer trends. Until recently, the phenomenon was known as conspicuous consumption. But the term has become largely redundant now, seeing as all goods and services - from food to cosmetics to gadgets - can be purchased with status in mind.
The trouble, for the social elite, is that the lower orders have started to catch up. A decade of economic growth and cheap credit has left the labour force swimming in disposable income, and the luxury goods market has expanded to soak it up. People in marketing call this the democratization of luxury - anyone can feel like a million dollars, as long as they’re prepared to pay the entry-level price. Today, one in four consumers in the UK regularly make luxury purchases. It’s been great news for the manufacturers, but a disaster for the upper class, who have found their symbols of status basterdised by footballers and checkout girls alike.
How do you distance yourself from the masses when all around, people are faking the trappings of your wealth? The answer is to upgrade beyond the boundaries of good taste; to consume products that are both astronomically priced and socially objectionable; products that fill onlookers not with envy but with disgust.
As the blue and white collars turn to hybrid cars, the elite snap up ostentatious gas-guzzlers. As the mass market begins to ditch mineral water, the rich drink £40 bottles of Bling H20, encrusted in Swarovski crystals.
While the masses calculate their carbon footprints, the market for private jets leaps 24% in a year. Welcome to the world of Uber-Luxe; a form of turbo consumerism that is so pointless, so wasteful and so abhorrent that ordinary consumers are unwilling and unable to pay the ethical and financial cost.
The more distasteful this lifestyle appears, the more luxurious it feels.
Being heckled for wearing a fur coat is a curious part of the pleasure. And the more expensive the lifestyle is, the better value it becomes. Ken Livingstone’s proposed £25 congestion fee will be a symbol of status in itself. This aggressive anti-ethical consumerism is best encapsulated in the aesthetics of luxury cars. Headlights squint with a menacing glare; grills are shaped like ferocious jaws; their tank-like proportions are purpose built for ploughing through the populace.
For the super rich, the new luxury status is that of social pariah. And for the middle classes, so near, yet so far from prosperity, the tendency is to give a jealous sneer. But the new luxury for the rest of us is, at long last, a disconnection from the trickle-down culture of Veblen’s model. This could be a release from the anxiety of social mobility, a chance to enjoy what we have, and stop craving for more. If the elite can’t think of better ways to spend their money, then lets leave them to it. We would all be so much richer for it.
