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Luxury Beliefs Are Status Symbols
Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars, the rich have taken to using much more tacit signifiers of their social position.
bbc • The new, subtle ways the rich signal their wealth
Then, and only then, will you understand the relative value of a ridiculous status symbol to someone who intuits that they cannot afford to not have it.
Tressie McMillan Cottom • Thick: And Other Essays
Those who want to win educated-class approval must confront the anxieties of abundance: how to show—not least to themselves—that even while climbing toward the top of the ladder they have not become all the things they still profess to hold in contempt. How to navigate the shoals between their affluence and their self-respect. How to reconcile thei
... See moreDavid Brooks • Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
While their symbolic position sometimes manifests itself through material goods, mostly they reveal their class position through cultural signifiers that convey their acquisition of knowledge and value system—dinner
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett • The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class
As I browsed various online forums trying to learn about college, I came across a book published in 1983 with an intriguing title: Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell. I bought a copy and discovered a new lens to understand education. The book claimed that the criteria we use to define the tiers of the social hierarchy
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