London - Don’t bother splurging on a shiny new four-wheel drive, loft conversion or exotic holiday in the hope of impressing the neighbours.
To keep up with the Joneses these days, you need to show off your green credentials.
Economists say ostentatious displays of wealth have fallen out of fashion. Instead, they claim the new status symbols are conspicuous donations to charity, buying second-hand clothes, collecting “useless” university degrees, speaking in politically correct language and making a point of not watching TV.
Efforts to be eco friendly, such as carrying a reusable cup for coffee shop drinks, also count. Cars, foreign holidays and other consumer luxuries have lost their appeal now so many people can afford them, according to a paper from the Adam Smith Institute titled The New Aristocrats.
Rather than trying to go one-up on others by splurging on Bentleys, Rolexes and fur coats, modern social climbers are more likely to show off their “authenticity”, says the institute. They do this by ‘having the correct opinions on music and politics and making sure their coffee is sourced ethically’.
Economist Ryan Murphy, author of the paper, said fast cars, gaudy diamonds and grand parties are so out of fashion they are rapidly being seen as distasteful. “A wife adorning herself with a fistful of diamonds perhaps could once convince herself that she wears the diamonds because they look beautiful and she loves her husband but broadly speaking, most of her dinner companions would see it as crass,” said Professor Murphy who is based at the Southern Methodist University in Texas.
“In other words, most elements of Western society have moved beyond associating ostentatious display of wealth with high status. If anything, it is considered rude.”
The new trend doesn’t just have implications for those keen to fit in. It also has important financial implications for governments. Luxury taxes might not be the money-spinner they once were, while university funding is being spent on obscure specialist degrees, rather than more practical qualifications. These are unlikely to help graduates get the sort of well-paid jobs needed to pay back university loans.
Sam Bowman, the Adam Smith Institute’s executive director, said: “In an era of abundance, the new ‘aristocrats’ prefer to show off their privilege with hard-to-get retro clothes and objects, studying obscure subjects at university or even taking loud, outrage-driven political positions or making conspicuous donations to sometimes wasteful charities. There’s nothing wrong with that, but far from taxing the pleasures of the privileged, in many cases our current system actually subsidises them.”
Daily Mail