Figure 3.1. How they spend it. Spending on inconspicuous vs. conspicuous consumption by income group. Data source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ballet Slippers and Yale Tuition: Inconspicuous Consumption and the New Elites
In the beginning, Essie Weingarten just liked nail polish colors. In 1981, Ms. Weingarten packed up her bags and displayed her initial 12 nail polish colors at a trade show in Las Vegas. In her collection she had, as she explained, “a true red, a blue red, a pink red and an orange red,” along with the translucent pink and white tones that made her famous. Essie was the first in the business to push the sheer colors, of which Ballet Slippers has become the iconic shade along with Vanity Fairest (Essie #505), Baby’s Breath (#5), Sugar Daddy (#473), and Mademoiselle (#384). As Essie explained, “I personally loved the look and nobody was doing it.” In 1989, Queen Elizabeth’s hairdresser sent a note to Essie requesting Ballet Slippers, Essie #162. As Essie recalls, “About two years after it came out, I received a letter from the Queen’s hairdresser [with the request] complete with Royal seal. I thought, ‘I’ve arrived.’”
In the decades since, Ballet Slippers and its sheer sisters have reigned supreme as the de rigueur nail polish colors for a particular group of women within Beverly Hills, New York’s Upper East Side, and London’s Kensington. Given the cult following by this aesthetically conscious elite group of women, and the Queen of England no less, surely there must be something special about Ballet Slippers—iridescent sparkles, unique mineral composition, or some attribute that would make its cult following so obvious. Yet, once applied, the color hardly screamed “notice me” or “I’ve just had a manicure.” One coat leaves nails a slight blush, two coats creates an opaque white with hints of pink. Rather, this delicate color, almost childlike, merely signals subtly that a woman grooms herself.
My initial assumption about sheer nail polish among these highsociety women was that its prevalence was a function of these women taking manicures for granted. Because well-groomed nails were such a quotidian part of their existence, it wasn’t necessary to wear bold colors to announce the specialness of getting one’s nails done. However, the phenomenon was quite the opposite: The women wore sheer colors precisely because their nails could never be taken for granted given the circles they ran in and the events they attended. They were a rarefied group who needed nails that assimilated within their social lives. The sheer color then became a symbol of an elite world where one’s appearance always mattered.
Ballet Slippers is not worn by these women because it costs more—this nail polish is on the spectrum of affordable luxury goods, unlike the limited edition $20,000 Birkin bag or rare vintage wine. High-society women spend the same $7.99 for a bottle as the lady in small-town Pennsylvania pays for Essie’s bright coral Geranium (#043). Yet both the Hermès bag and Ballet Slippers are status signifiers nonetheless.
Historically, professional manicures were very much relegated to high society and the affluent. “Getting a manicure before the 1980s was really special,” Essie explained. “Before then, it was an outrage [to spend money on a manicure].” Then things changed. Starting in the 1980s, with the increased availability of low-wage service workers (located disproportionately in major cities), the price of manicures decreased such that average women were able to go to the salon. Now women can pop into a salon and have their nails done for $15.
Today, according to Euromonitor International, manicures are a $1 billion industry. Over a six-month period, 27 million adults had salon manicures and 32 million had pedicures. The trend continues to increase: From 2010 to 2011, manicure rates grew by 24%. Thus, a former habit of high society was easily translated by the masses. For Essie, nail polish became a democratic means to a former luxury and status good of the social elite—a taste of high society within reach. Today, Essie Weingarten’s eponymous nail polish, Essie, is a household name to many an American woman and is sold in pharmacies and nail salons around the world.
With the decrease in manicure price, new colors have become more popular (blue, black, green, and flesh shades)—partially because manicures are so inexpensive that women can change their nail polish without it costing much. The manicure has become more disposable for everyone. Despite this trend, many women in high society and the professional world still wear sheer colors. It’s hard to say which came first, the subtle colors as a functional or practical manicure or the fact that the subtle colors are a signal of a particular social position. Nevertheless, it is the way in which the manicure is translated—i.e., the color of choice—that makes all the difference. Unlike more material and ostentatious forms of conspicuous consumption, these nail polishes and the women who wear them illustrate a different barrier—the cost of information and knowing the implicit details that define a particular social stratum.
The choice of what color to paint one’s nails is but one quotidian example of what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would have called objectified cultural capital. In his landmark book, Distinction, Bourdieu argues that one’s “taste” was less about the specific paintings on a wall or the car one drove and more about the cultural capital accrued through knowledge, social networks, and education that was indicated by those items.1 Cultural capital (as opposed to economic capital or money) is the collection of distinctive aesthetics, skills, and knowledge (often attained through education and pedigree). Objectified cultural capital suggests that particular objects gain cultural or symbolic value that transcends, and is often greater than, any monetary value assigned. Thus social class is not produced through consumption (you can’t “buy” your way automatically into the upper class) but rather it is attained through the adoption of values and aesthetics and the ability to decipher symbols and signs beyond materialism. These values, aesthetics, and taste form the “habitus” of everyday life—the ways in which we view the world and make normative judgments from our particular vantage point (as a rich, white person in Manhattan or poor African American in Mississippi, or a wealthy Latino in Miami, or member of the bourgeoisie in small-town America). The habitus is not simply the consumption patterns but the knowledge of what to consume. Thus, pale pink nail polish is the physical embodiment of the trappings of a particular social and economic class. The women know to paint their nails with Ballet Slippers as a commodified signifier of the cultural capital and habitus they glean from living an Upper East Side (NYC) life.
Most consumption choices are made at the intersection of the economic, cultural, and social values of particular classes and they are consciously and unconsciously appropriated to sort different groups from one another.2 In an era where conspicuous consumption is accessible, social position is often truly defined by things we cannot see. Or, as Vance Packard remarked in The Status Seekers, “While Americans are ceremoniously egalitarian in their more conspicuous behavior patterns, they reflect, sometimes wittingly and often unwittingly, their class status by the nuances of their demeanor, speech, taste, drinking and dining patterns, and favored pasttimes.”3 Similarly, in the twenty-first century, social status emerges not simply from cars or watches but from inaccessible cues, information, and investments. For the aspirational class these signifiers are what I call “inconspicuous consumption”—that is, more subtle, less materialistic forms of conveying status particularly to others in-the-know. Sometimes these consumption choices aren’t even intended to display status at all. Whether they are extraordinarily expensive versions of goods everyone buys, or investments in the life chances of their children, these new forms of inconspicuous consumption are goods and services purchased for the sake of making one’s life easier, improving well-being (both intellectual and physical). Yet through both prosaic and profound inconspicuous consumption, these elites (whether the culturally rich aspirational class or just the rich) entrench their and their children’s socioeconomic position.
The rise in inconspicuous consumption is a result of three important trends. First, so much of material consumption is accessible and overt that the aspirational class, both consciously and unconsciously, finds more obscure, codified symbols to reveal their social position.4 Second, there is no “leisure class.” The restructuring of the global economy prizes a meritocracy, who own the means of production through their minds, not land ownership. These labor market elites (many of whom are members of the aspirational class) believe in upward mobility and want the same for their children. Their dominant ethos—working hard and acquiring knowledge—is also the dominant cultural hegemony and spills over into all walks of life. Jonathan Gershuny observes that the relationship between work and leisure in contemporary society suggests that those who earn a lot of money work very hard to attain and maintain it, thus leisure time is the scarcest resource of all. He also observes that much of that leisure time is increasingly filled with consumer activities and to possess more leisure time paradoxically requires more work.5 Today’s labor market elites, particularly those in the aspirational class, devote money to freeing up that time and making the best of it through paying dearly for child care, housekeeping, gardeners, and luxury holidays. Finally, and most importantly, material consumption (particularly post-Recession) is less valuable than investing resources into the consumption that counts, like education, retirement, and health care, all of which price-out ordinary people but are critical conduits in the reproduction of aspirational class position and further separating the rich from the rest.
All of these latter consumption habits cost a lot of money but are not ostensibly about revealing one’s status (even if they actually do). Inconspicuous consumption thus takes two, almost bifurcated, forms: cost-of-information inconspicuous consumption: inexpensive and nonpecuniary signifiers such as nail polish color and particular cultural knowledge, and cost-prohibitive inconspicuous consumption: incredibly expensive consumption such as child care, health care, and college tuition, which both significantly improve the quality of life for those who can afford it and simultaneously reinforce and retrench existing class lines. I will discuss each of these types of spending in turn. The key to most all inconspicuous consumption is that it is nonvisible except to those in the know, and is difficult to emulate without tacit information or a significant amount of money. Inconspicuous consumption is the source of the new class divide.
COST OF INFORMATION: NONPECUNIARY INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
This use of nonpecuniary means to demonstrate status is not entirely alien from Veblen’s time. Veblen observed (and critiqued) the use of “manners” and “good breeding” as a demonstration of status. Acquiring manners and demonstrating them took time and was often possible only for those who led a life of leisure, exemplifying two important qualities of Veblen’s upper class. Language has also always been a means to show social position—like manners, it takes time to acquire and practice particular word choices and turns of phrase. To quote the late social critic Paul Fussell, “Regardless of the money you’ve inherited … the place you live, the way you look … the time you eat dinner, the stuff you buy from mail-order catalogs … your social class is still most clearly visible when you say things.”6 Fussell goes on to discuss the “pseudoelegant style” of the middle class: their discomfort in calling a toilet a toilet (rather, it is a restroom/lavatory/powder room), a drunk a drunk (he is someone “with alcohol problems”), or to comfortably use swear words or the word “death” (rather, it is “passing away” or “taken to Jesus”). Conversely, they are self-conscious using words that the upper classes use with reckless abandon: “divine,” “outstanding,” “super,” “tedious,” “tiresome.” In their place, the middle class uses those umbrella words of banality: “nice” and “boring.”
These observations get to class distinctions that transcend money and material goods: the “cost of information” and the cultural capital that one accrues through knowledge. Unlike conventional status goods, the new means by which members of the aspirational class define themselves are through goods that may cost just the same as they do for their middle-class counterparts but are only accessed through rarified information. As showy and material means of establishing status are more accessible, the aspirational class finds subtle symbols, cultural capital, and language to distinguish itself from other groups, and its members use knowledge as an important dividing line between them and the rest. Thus the aspirational class members shape and demonstrate their position through information they can attain only through their peers and position as purveyors of cultural capital. Just as Ballet Slippers does not cost more, there is a price to exist in the elite world where sheer nail polish is thought to be the standard, and the same holds true for other aspects of inconspicuous consumption. Nonmonetary, nonfunctional goods may cost the same in price, but the cost of information, rather than the actual cost of the good, is what creates the barrier.
This appropriation of value onto nonpecuniary behaviors is what the Columbia University sociologist Shamus Khan calls a “learned form of capital”; in other words, knowledge about ways of doing things becomes internalized, and acquiring it is an iterative process that in itself becomes valuable. In his study of Concord’s elite school, St. Paul’s, Khan argues that subtle forms of class assimilation, or “hidden curriculum,” are in many ways more reinforcing of social position than more ostentatious and material symbols. The boys Khan interviewed discussed the hard work it took to gain entry into St. Paul’s and asserted that they earned their success, but as Khan observed in his ethnographic work, most of them were seen to do very little work at all. In fact, the culture of success at St. Paul’s was one of “ease” and effortlessness in their success. Walking to class without books was a marker of status, while those who actually carried huge backpacks of books and toiled away at the library doing homework were pariahs. “Hard work” was an important value to verbally espouse, emerging from a new generation of ostensibly meritocratic elites (who do in fact believe they have worked hard and deserve their position in the social pecking order). In reality, however, most of these students were as entitled as previous elites and their social behaviors were reflective of this. The belief in hard work becomes what Khan calls “a rhetorical cover” to mask what is actually privilege. “It is those students from advantaged backgrounds,” Khan writes with NYU sociologist Colin Jerolmack, “who are most likely to succeed because throughout their lives, before even crossing the threshold of these spaces, they have developed the dispositions and cultural capital that give them an advantage over others. They feel at home within the institutions that reward them for exactly the type of behavior that is ‘native’ to them.”7
To borrow an example from the sociologist Douglas Holt, the act of attending the opera is not the cultural capital, but rather the combination of the knowledge of when the performances are scheduled and where to buy the tickets, the appreciation of the music, the ability to reference the performance in discussion of other topics, and having people to share the experience with—and finally, the understanding that going to the opera is a valuable use of time.8 Similarly, many of the observations made by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman could just as easily be made by simply thinking about massive inequality, unemployment, and the Great Recession’s aftermath. Krugman’s actual insights are less important than recognizing that reading Krugman is important. Reading the New York Times is a part of the aspirational class shared language, and citing Krugman (and knowing he is a Nobel Prize winner) at a dinner party is a significant part of fitting in with this group. The awareness of Krugman and the New York Times, not Krugman’s thoughts in and of themselves (with all due respect), demonstrates cultural capital. But the value of the New York Times is place- and social situation–specific: Bringing up Krugman at a Manhattan dinner party would be met with approval or would be a nonevent that assimilates one into the group. In contrast, while Krugman’s subjects (inequality, tax policy, presidential elections) may be of interest to those attending a Christmas party in small-town Pennsylvania, citing Krugman doesn’t garner any social points. Herein lies the value of Ballet Slippers as greater than its $7.99 price tag.
Cultural capital is shaped by far more than money and objects. Many Bourdieu critics believed that his theories of cultural capital and habitus didn’t apply in the United States because Americans are not known for their taste in high art and aesthetics. But Holt makes the point that Bourdieu’s observations are not relegated to highbrow behaviors. Rather, his understanding of how shared aesthetics and values are formed by particular social groups can be broadly applied. Gilded Age elites made huge efforts to establish their distinct position, while those of today’s aspirational class tend to be “cultural omnivores” in their consumption patterns, reflecting their knowledge, worldliness, and open-mindedness as a result of education and immersion into diverse environments (whether travel abroad or the international student body of their alma mater).9 Vance Packard observed this of upper classes more than 50 years ago in his dissection of class behavior: “The average person of the lower group feels anxious in the presence of strange foods, and considers them fraught with danger. A Midwestern society matron reports her astonishment to find that her maid will not touch many of the very costly foods she serves the guests, such as venison, wild duck, pompano, caviar. Even when these are all prepared, steaming and ready to eat, the maid will cook herself some salt pork, turnip greens and potatoes. These are the foods she knows.”10
The members of today’s aspirational class fully embrace their cultural omnivore status through many different forms of cultural capital and totemic objects. They pride themselves on going to hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants instead of Applebee’s, buying local farmers’ eggs, and wearing TOMS shoes because these signifiers of cultural capital reveal social and environmental consciousness, surely acquired in the pages of the New Yorker and at the elite universities they attended. Even if they have full-time careers, the attainment of such knowledge implies that they either have the conspicuous leisure time to read or stroll famers’ markets, or that they value the acquisition of this type of information as a worthy use of their time. In his study of class in America, Holt described this type of cultural capital as “authenticity and connoisseurship,” which was prized among the upper classes (regardless of price point), whereas the lower classes valued things if they were expensive. The lower classes share “collective signals of [material] luxury” compared to the premium that the upper class places on individuality and shared knowledge of contemporary nonfiction writers and Cannes film festival award-winning documentaries. Similarly, in a study of contemporary upper-middle-class music tastes, the sociologists Richard Peterson and Robert Kern found that their music preferences were not relegated to opera and classical music, but rather ranged from everything from hiphop to pop to folk along with the expected highbrow inclinations. As many of the upper middle class attained their status through higher education and professional position (the former of which tends to be associated with greater tolerance), Peterson and Kern speculate that perhaps these new elites are in fact more open than previous generations. More cynically, one might interpret the new elites’ diverse “nobrow” consumer choices as a symbolic boundary that stakes their rarified social position. In other words, that they know to have diverse and idiosyncratic consumer choices may suggest a cultural sophistication that only comes with the education and knowledge that propels them into their social position.
This evolution from overt wealth (or the pretense of wealth) to discreet signals of class is present in aspirational class food too. Indeed, exotic or authentic food has become a legitimated signal of cultural capital for the aspirational class—and one that is shared across the economic gradients. While only the top income groups may be able to write checks for their kids to go to Stanford, the consumption of particular types of food becomes a unifying form of objectified cultural capital for all members of the aspirational class. Today’s aspirational class circulates around cafés and restaurants that offer several different presentations of kale on the same menu, almond lattes, and gourmet comfort food. Stews rather than soufflés, chicken pot pie, artisanal mac and cheese, and beer (so long as it is craft) have become de rigueur signals of aspirational class culinary life and can be found in a variety of settings, from meals made by a banker’s wife to those of a hipster screenwriter’s Sunday brunch with friends. Sure, this food is more expensive than McDonald’s, but most of it is still at a price point that members of the aspirational class can afford, and due to their cultural capital, they believe this type of food is worth the cost. While this type of cultural capital appears more democratic, as the sociologists Johnston and Baumann observe, foodie culture reaffirms Bourdieu’s basic thesis that everyday cultural forms create and maintain social status.11 Kale salad may not seem as overtly snobby as the opera but it’s still a means of preserving class lines, albeit more subtly.
The accrual of particular types of knowledge and the sharing of cultural capital mean that the new elites use this information to buy particular things and act in particular ways and to further solidify their position. Or, as Khan writes, “Culture is a resource used by elites to recognize one another and distribute opportunities on the basis of the display of appropriate attributes.”12 Nail polish color is more subtle and less expensive than yachts and handbags, but the choice to wear one color over another involves acquiring knowledge as to what is aesthetically appropriate and appreciated by one’s peer group. When to write a thank you note, how to hold one’s fork, how many books to walk to class with (i.e., none at all)—are also learned behaviors that appear costless but are actually embedded in the experience of being in a particular socioeconomic group. “What appears as a natural, simple quality,” Khan remarks, “is actually learned through repeated experiences in elite institutions.”13
While the 1920s Gilded Age elites and today’s “nouveau riche” (think of the stereotyped Russian oligarchs or Hollywood celebrities) may make great efforts to distinguish themselves in overt ways from everyone else, members of the aspirational class use discretion to separate themselves. Consider that even the wealthiest aspirational class kitchens often decorate with copper pots, rustic Stickley dining tables, and Aga-like stoves that resemble those used in the kitchen of Downton Abbey, rather than the upstairs formal baroque style of English aristocrats. Casualness in all facets of life has become a part of aspirational class habitus. In this respect, the aesthetics of the aspirational class are in line with those of bobos. As David Brooks writes in his book Bobos in Paradise, “Educated elites are expected to spend huge amounts of money on things that used to be cheap … We prefer to buy the same items as the proletariat—it’s just that we buy rarefied versions of these items that members of the working class would consider preposterous. So we will buy chicken legs, just like everyone else, but they’ll likely be free-range … we’ll buy potatoes, but we won’t buy an Idaho spud. We’ll select one of those miniature potatoes of distinction that grow only in certain soils of northern France.” For bobos, the downplaying of status resulted from discomfort with their newly acquired wealth. For the aspirational class, the choice of particular fabrics, wood, or foodstuffs has to do with acquiring knowledge of what is superior, more environmentally friendly, and more humane. We find these subtle signs of class in everything from what the aspirational class eats (gourmet, organic, and humane comfort foods), where they buy groceries (farmers’ markets and Whole Foods), what they wear (organic cotton and made in the USA with no labels), and what they talk about (articles in the Wall Street Journal or the most talked-about podcast, which at present is Serial). All of these subtle cues suggest knowledge and a value system acquired through extensive acquisition of knowledge—and an aspiration to achieve a higher cultural and social way of being and a nonchalant worldliness about books, news events, and so forth. As many aspirational class members are ostensibly part of the “meritocratic elite” or at least educated with such an intention, these cues suggest membership but also reveal the cost of information to acquire it (college educations, reading highbrow publications, being up-to-date on food production practices).
Just as ease and insouciance are part of being on top of the pecking order at St. Paul’s, staged informality has become a common aesthetic among the aspirational class. The former British prime minister David Cameron (a well-bred Eton and Oxford boy and distant relative of the queen) received a media bashing after his government minister, Francis Maude, shared his affection for hosting “kitchen suppers” with fellow elite cronies (including Cameron), a sort of upper-class version of slumming it. Our upper classes no longer have multicourse dinners every night with strange and obscure silver kitchen utensils, but the downgrading of “dinner” to a casual “supper” further distances the cultural elites from everyone else who keeps the meal special. The origin of the term “kitchen supper” again hails from the days of British lords and ladies and their servants who ate their dinner in the kitchen away from the aristocrats they served. Today, the term has been coopted by the elites themselves to imply that one has a dining room (and thus the kitchen supper is a separate type of meal); in addition, the decision to forgo the dining room implies the choice to be more casual and intimate. Charles Moore, the Telegraph writer and Margaret Thatcher biographer, remarks of the kitchen supper eaters, “[They are] disclosing an assumption—we have a nice dining room but we’ll be all relaxed with our pals and won’t use it.”14 Or as Katrin Bennhold wrote of “supper-gate” in the New York Times, “[When] Francis Maude, the British Cabinet Office minister, spoke of ‘kitchen suppers,’ the media reminded him that most voters had ‘dinner’ (middle class) or ‘tea’ (working class) and not necessarily the option of eating in a dining room”;15 thus suggesting the implication that the kitchen was one of at least two options. Or as Rachel Cooke wittily wrote in the Guardian,
Who, apart from Francis Maude and his friends, uses it? And what, exactly, does it mean? In fact, it takes a while to unpick it, for within these two words lurk such a dizzying array of assumptions. The knowledge that one’s kitchen is big enough to contain a table. The suggestion that, elsewhere in the house, there might be another room where, on a more important occasion, one might also eat. The deft swerve around the words “dinner party” (these, being aspirational middle class, are presumably non-U16 in Maude-ian circles) and “meal” (also non-U, though I’ve no idea why; I’m only aware of this at all because a horrible old Etonian I once met ticked me off when it fell sluttishly from my lips).17
Similarly, saying one went to a “small school in Cambridge” when everyone knows you mean Harvard suggests the downplaying of something that is actually prized and rare, just like the option to have dinner in the dining room or the kitchen. A household’s rule of taking one’s shoes off when entering suggests too much regard and preciousness for the house (nouveau), while the aspirational class wouldn’t dare imply their house was worthy of such care (even if it actually is).
The relationship between status and nonpecuniary inconspicuous consumption can perhaps be best observed in the behaviors of those on the lower economic gradient of the aspirational class: hipsters—those young, 20-something-year-old urban denizens working in film or screenwriting or publishing—who barely make enough money to pay the rent, let alone attend parties with the queen of England or the head of Citibank. Yet for this drolly ironic subculture, information about what is cool or in the know is all they have and thus they too engage in nonpecuniary means of inconspicuous consumption that allow them to define their social position by reading and referencing obscure blogs and Twitter feeds, carrying NPR canvas bags, and riding fixed-gear bicycles. They drink hemp milk, not dairy; drive old Mercedes revamped to run on veggie oil instead of second-hand Honda Accords; buy fast food at food trucks rather than McDonald’s; even though these goods are more or less comparable in price. (Incidentally, McDonald’s now serves kale salads, surely a response to the new emphasis on healthy eating championed by both health professionals and the aspirational class.) Yet the veggie oil car (despite smelling like a plate of French fries when it trundles by) and the almond butter (which really does taste almost the same as peanut butter) convey cultural capital for members of the aspirational class. These practices and goods are not more expensive but are established and coopted through an insider’s game of information on local subculture, hole-in-the-wall dive bars, and the whereabouts of particular food trucks.
The new mannerisms and consumption practices of the aspirational class are not ostentatious even if they often imply wealth or knowledge. Unlike a Prada logo, these habits are not recognized as conveying status in a ubiquitous way. In the twenty-first century, there is a reversal of sorts of historical depictions of the elite classes and cultural capital. Thank you notes and good manners are still prized, as they were in Veblen’s time, but superfluous notes or overly precious manners appear to be trying too hard.18 Some members of today’s aspirational class distinguish themselves through an active downplay of labels and ostentation and an upgrading of their cultural capital and signifiers—behaviors and information that are simultaneously inaccessible and costless. Hipsters may not be labor market elites (although many are), but they draw their elitism through rarified information too. They know who to read, who to follow on Twitter and Instagram, and particular types of insider language and obscure (almost fetishized) objects of consumption, whether almond lattes, green juice, or the $12 Casio calculator watch.
All of these practices reveal what Max Weber called “styles of life.”19 Thus, money and status, while related, are not the same thing. Rather, people of a similar income bracket do not necessarily behave and consume in the same way; behavior is determined more by how one got there, where she came from, and where she lives. This observation captures what Bourdieu meant when he believed it was impossible to be upwardly mobile simply through material goods. Bourdieu would observe that status then becomes a product of who we socialize with and the information and cues we pick up as a result.20 Taste and style of life are passed on from generation to generation and learned at a young age or through membership in a particular group. If one is not brought up within an elite habitus, one remains an outsider. This explains why we see the true upper class of Britain poor as paupers but status rich, and why Tony Soprano, with his big New Jersey suburban house, would never be invited to attend a Met gala or to serve on the board of the New York Public Library. In a crushing scene in Dominick Dunne’s best-selling novel Too Much Money, the imprisoned billionaire Elias Renthal tells his estranged aspiring high-society wife, “You still haven’t gotten those people straight, Ruby. You still want to be one of them…. I know about the baron in Paris, who went back to his dyke wife rather than marry you…. she has lineage, like a title … and all that stuff. You don’t.”
The essence of taste and habitus implies layers of status and acquired knowledge which may be a function of money but is not entirely explained by money alone. Thus, nonpecuniary inconspicuous consumption revolves around tacit knowledge, cultural capital and habitus, and what Michele Lamont calls “symbolic boundaries.”21 Lamont, a sociology professor at Harvard University, believes that Bourdieu’s conception of cultural capital is too rigid and ignores other measures of status, particularly morality, which Lamont believes is highly important (but different) across the upper middle classes. Morality is a class issue that transcends conventional economic and even cultural lines. It is not enough to be rich or well-off or to know that reading the New York Review of Books or the Paris Review matters, but even one’s values on marriage (mistress or not?), success (power or fame?), and what to spend one’s money on as a general principle, are markers of where one fits in, and these matters become the redlines that classes don’t cross. For example, in France, the male professionals Lamont interviewed for her study were much more comfortable talking about extramarital affairs than their American counterparts (even if statistics would suggest the latter participated just as much). While definitions of success were specific to each country, the upper-middle-class values of France (power and fame) and the United States (the implication of money) were consistently shared with their countrymen. Unlike accruing capital, which suggests that simply after having a certain amount one is a part of a particular group, symbolic boundaries imply lines drawn; thus they essentially allow us to exclude and include some people and not others. As the late social critic A. A. Gill sums it up, “After a bit, the money stops working.”22
COST-PROHIBITIVE INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
Of course it’s not so simple. Many of the things that are not about money are of course absolutely about money. Economic choices uphold social mores and consumption choices. The inverse is, of course, true too: Social mores and consumption choices are a result of economic options. You could be very poor and read the New Yorker, but there’s a lot more to a subscription than simply the magazine itself. The New Yorker suggests socioeconomic and cultural position, but there are a whole host of other things that uphold it. Reading these publications implies an educated life, and a value system placed upon culture and knowledge (and the luxury to have such a value system). Most of the readers trolling through the pages of the New Yorker and the New York Times are likely to have $40,000-plus college educations (and graduate degrees too) from elite institutions and spend time with similarly educated people with whom they trade opinions and information. The New York Times costs $2.50 for the daily paper, $5 for the Sunday edition (the daily habit adds up), but comprehension of all those SAT words and cultural allusions (Camus, Foucault, Freud) implies a whole host of expensively attained knowledge. Cultural capital (and symbolic boundaries) costs money even if not all money can purchase cultural capital. Cultural capital is not about material goods and yet is still largely drawn from material wealth, even if the choices almost seem natural and habituated (more on this practice as status signifier in chapter 4). Understanding the value of these nonmaterial signifiers relies largely on spending time with others who also place significance on the newspaper and the well-groomed nails (and organic vegetables, direct trade coffee, and so forth). Without the shared experience, the sheer nail color and the strawberries are not so important. Much of aspirational class shared experience is based on information that costs money, even if it is materially invisible, just like the kids at St. Paul’s who know to walk without books and make their work appear effortless. As Khan remarks, “The apparent easiness of these characteristics implies that if someone does not know how to embody [them] … it is somehow their fault as they do not naturally have what it takes.”23
But these nonpecuniary signals of status are underpinned by a type of consumption that truly excludes everyone but the rich. Whether college tuition, child care, or luxury holidays, these investments are cost-prohibitive for most Americans, and also genuinely affect the day-today and generational outcomes of those who are able to afford them compared to those who cannot. In short, this is consumption that is not about status as much as quality of life. Returning to Jonathan Gershuny’s observations on leisure and work: Most rich people today work many hours to make their money, and as a result lose the very time that could be used for leisure.24 Leisure is expensive. As a result, many of their consumption practices are directed toward recouping time and preserving their socioeconomic position for their and their children’s futures. It is no surprise that this costs a lot of money. This type of pecuniary inconspicuous consumption can be divided into three key categories: labor-intensive (utility-driven over status), experience-driven (non-utilitarian but also not status-seeking), and consumption that counts (investments in the quality of life and well-being of oneself and one’s children). These three types of inconspicuous consumption are symbiotic: As society in general has less time, one significant expense is the outsourcing of the drudgery that takes up time that could otherwise be used for fun. Hiring a nanny and paying for direct flights creates more time for weekend getaways—all of which can be very costly. Paying for college tuition, good preschools, and retirement is not only incredibly expensive but secures the upward mobility of the wealthy members of the aspirational class and their offspring, while excluding everyone else who cannot afford these goods. In the following section, I will look at these trends more broadly and how the rich (many of whom are members of the aspirational class) spend compared to the rest of America.
For starters, the rich have always spent more than everyone else on inconspicuous consumption, and less on conspicuous consumption than they do on education, child care, tuition, SAT courses, political contributions, and other nonvisible spending, but this trend has significantly increased in the Recession aftermath.25 While the top income groups tended to spend essentially the same on conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption pre-2007, after the crisis their consumption habits changed significantly, with huge drops in conspicuous consumption after the crisis, followed by a slight uptick but never returning to previous levels from 2008 onward. As the economist Robert Frank observes, with the outcry over inequality in full swing, public hedonism and overt luxury spending have become flashpoints in the debate (which is not to say they aren’t spending money), and thus those in top income groups find new channels for their money that are known only to those in their circles (whether it’s a live-in housekeeper or, for the very rich, NetJets to Art Basel Miami).26 Conversely, the middle class, those in the 40th to 60th percentile income bracket making on average $47,000 a year, are returning to their pre-Recession conspicuous consumption behavior while reducing their spending on inconspicuous consumption in the post-Recession period. Historically, they have always spent significantly more on conspicuous expenditures than inconspicuous consumption, and at the height of the financial crisis barely reduced their spending on clothes, watches, cars, and other Veblen goods (see fig. 3.1).
In fact, in absolute dollars, only the top three income brackets are spending more today on inconspicuous consumption than they did in 1996—the middle class and lower income groups are spending less during the same time period. Overall, the upper income brackets are spending 5–10% more on these goods than they did in 1996. For the average American household, inconspicuous consumption accounts for about 10% of all expenditures. For the top 1%, 5%, and 10% income groups’ expenditure share devoted to inconspicuous consumption is 22.9%, 19.7%, and 17.4% respectively, up to 80% more than the national average. Contrast these shares to the middle and lower income groups where inconspicuous consumption accounts for just 9–9.5% of total expenditures. As a household moves up the income chain, its members tend to spend more on inconspicuous consumption.
The wealthy now spend almost 5.5 times more than the national average on inconspicuous goods (versus 2.5 times more than the nation on conspicuous consumption) and almost 12% more than they did in 1996. The middle class, by contrast, spends 40% less on inconspicuous consumption as compared to the US average, and 20% less as compared to 1996.
Figure 3.1. How they spend it. Spending on inconspicuous vs. conspicuous consumption by income group. Data source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
LABOR-INTENSIVE AND EXPERIENCE-DRIVEN INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
It’s no surprise that the upper income groups devote significantly more money to these consumption habits, which free up time and make life run smoother. It’s also no surprise that most people cannot afford these types of spending. Much of it requires labor, which doesn’t get much cheaper over time. No matter what technological advances the world develops, some tasks still require the hard work of real people. Economist William Baumol observed that a Beethoven string quartet would always require four musicians putting forth the same degree of effort regardless of increased productivity or technological innovations that might make other industries more efficient (the manufacturing sector, for instance). And, even as the musicians’ productivity remains the same, their real wages will increase due to inflation and economic growth, or what Baumol called the “cost disease.” This is true, too, for many service industries like daycare and lawn care. Controlling for fads and fashions in childrearing (as I will discuss in chapter 4), taking care of children has been a fairly straightforward task for centuries, yet the cost of a babysitter or nanny’s labor has increased significantly. More practically, child care is an industry that just won’t be automated. (No one is going to let a robot take care of their kids.) And while there is such a thing as a roaming automated vacuum cleaner, the detailed aspects of housekeeping require a person scrubbing tiles and polishing coffee tables. The same holds true for music instructors, veterinarians, and dog walkers. Even with technological innovations, people are still crucial in many areas of life management and upkeep.
These macro changes in society and economics show up in consumption patterns. Looking at the actual numbers, the top 1% spends 10–20 times more than the middle class on child care. The top 5% and 10% also spend significantly more on child care: in excess of 6–8 times more in absolute dollars than the middle class. While it is logical to expect that the more money people have, the more they spend on making their lives easier, these upper income groups also spend a greater share of their total expenditures on child care, suggesting they are prioritizing child care over other consumption choices. They are spending two to five times more of their share of expenditures on child care than the middle class does. Similarly, domestic services, which include gardening, security, and housekeeping, are more prized by the upper income groups both as demonstrated by absolute dollars spent and share of total expenditures: the top 1% spends about 20 times more on domestic services than the middle classes, and double even that of the top 10%. As with child care, the wealthy clearly also choose to make these services a priority over other expenditures: The top 1% spends four to five times more of its total household expenditures on domestic services than the middle class. In general, the top 5% and 10% spend similar shares of total expenditures on domestic services as the top 1% (although the top 1% still spend the most on child care) (see tables 3.1–3.4.). Do they have bigger houses than the less well-off and thus might need extra help? Possibly. But the top income groups also have the option to have someone else mop their floors, mow their lawn, and water their plants, while the data suggest that lower income groups do these chores themselves.
Table 3.1. Expenditures on child care by year and income group (in 2015 dollars)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
140 |
135 |
118 |
104 |
95 |
114 |
108 |
103 |
106 |
110 |
Top 1% |
885 |
995 |
1,025 |
606 |
596 |
893 |
984 |
1,507 |
963 |
2,110 |
Top 5% |
389 |
380 |
400 |
409 |
354 |
517 |
519 |
564 |
452 |
676 |
Top 10% |
383 |
325 |
302 |
342 |
286 |
384 |
378 |
387 |
401 |
429 |
60–89th percentile |
166 |
160 |
128 |
104 |
99 |
114 |
110 |
100 |
79 |
101 |
40–59th percentile |
72 |
94 |
68 |
53 |
60 |
56 |
47 |
39 |
60 |
41 |
0–39th percentile |
47 |
43 |
60 |
35 |
31 |
36 |
29 |
30 |
42 |
31 |
The findings on labor-intensive inconspicuous consumption align with the extensive work of Suzanne Bianchi and her colleagues. Bianchi finds that despite the fact that there are more women in the workforce today than in the middle of the twentieth century, and despite the fact that parents in general work more than ever, today parents are spending more time with their kids than in the “family-oriented” 1960s. Using time diary data over several decades starting in the 1960s, Bianchi and colleagues find that cultural norms around parenting are changing. Parents are more involved with their kids voluntarily, and there is an “ideal of shared parenting” that lessens the traditional load on the mother. Bianchi finds that parents give up more of their leisure time to be with their children. The management of parents’ time toward finding more of it to spend with their kids suggests the role of inconspicuous consumption in making this possible.27 Bianchi also reports that even though women are working more in the twenty-first century, they are actually spending the same amount of time, if not more, with their kids as the stay-at-home moms of the mid-twentieth century.28 Part of this change is a result of larger reconfigurations of how society uses time and what is valued. Take the case of housework: While cleanliness standards have not necessarily gone down, housework is less valued as a reasonable use of a working mother’s time. Bianchi finds that households now rely on domestic service (e.g., housekeepers and gardeners) and men pitching in so that mothers can spend time with their families.29
Table 3.2. Share of expenditures on child care by year and income group (%)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
0.25 |
0.23 |
0.20 |
0.17 |
0.16 |
0.18 |
0.18 |
0.18 |
0.18 |
0.19 |
Top 1% |
0.52 |
0.58 |
0.55 |
0.35 |
0.34 |
0.49 |
0.57 |
0.88 |
0.54 |
1.22 |
Top 5% |
0.30 |
0.28 |
0.31 |
0.31 |
0.27 |
0.35 |
0.37 |
0.42 |
0.33 |
0.51 |
Top 10% |
0.34 |
0.28 |
0.26 |
0.29 |
0.25 |
0.30 |
0.32 |
0.34 |
0.34 |
0.37 |
60–89th percentile |
0.26 |
0.24 |
0.19 |
0.15 |
0.15 |
0.17 |
0.16 |
0.16 |
0.12 |
0.16 |
40–59th percentile |
0.17 |
0.22 |
0.16 |
0.12 |
0.14 |
0.12 |
0.10 |
0.09 |
0.14 |
0.09 |
0–39th percentile |
0.15 |
0.13 |
0.18 |
0.11 |
0.09 |
0.11 |
0.09 |
0.09 |
0.13 |
0.10 |
Table 3.3. Expenditures on domestic services by year and income group (in 2015 dollars)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
237 |
252 |
286 |
264 |
292 |
330 |
325 |
305 |
342 |
343 |
Top 1% |
2,372 |
2,380 |
3,432 |
2,121 |
2,552 |
2,720 |
2,628 |
2,368 |
2,627 |
3,020 |
Top 5% |
1,286 |
1,436 |
1,432 |
1,338 |
1,412 |
1,761 |
1,637 |
1,579 |
1,681 |
1,651 |
Top 10% |
853 |
1,002 |
991 |
947 |
1,022 |
1,244 |
1,195 |
1,126 |
1,176 |
1,190 |
60–89th percentile |
191 |
181 |
237 |
211 |
264 |
266 |
297 |
266 |
286 |
306 |
40–59th percentile |
103 |
109 |
143 |
147 |
130 |
159 |
131 |
141 |
187 |
159 |
0–39th percentile |
129 |
125 |
150 |
121 |
129 |
138 |
127 |
118 |
162 |
158 |
Table 3.4. Share of expenditures on domestic services by year and income group (%)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
0.42 |
0.43 |
0.49 |
0.44 |
0.50 |
0.54 |
0.54 |
0.53 |
0.59 |
0.59 |
Top 1% |
1.39 |
1.38 |
1.85 |
1.24 |
1.44 |
1.48 |
1.52 |
1.38 |
1.48 |
1.74 |
Top 5% |
0.99 |
1.06 |
1.09 |
1.01 |
1.06 |
1.19 |
1.18 |
1.19 |
1.23 |
1.25 |
Top 10% |
0.76 |
0.86 |
0.87 |
0.82 |
0.89 |
0.98 |
1.00 |
0.99 |
1.01 |
1.02 |
60–89th percentile |
0.29 |
0.28 |
0.36 |
0.31 |
0.39 |
0.39 |
0.44 |
0.41 |
0.44 |
0.47 |
40–59th percentile |
0.24 |
0.25 |
0.33 |
0.32 |
0.30 |
0.35 |
0.29 |
0.33 |
0.43 |
0.36 |
0–39th percentile |
0.41 |
0.37 |
0.44 |
0.36 |
0.39 |
0.41 |
0.38 |
0.37 |
0.50 |
0.49 |
Experience-driven goods, such as travel, wine, lodging out of town—the fun parts of life—are also a significant area of top income spending. The rich spend more than the middle and lower income groups by substantial margins. In fact, when it comes to experience-driven goods, the top 1% and 5% are dramatically different from everyone else. In 2014, the top 1% spent, on average, $32,000 on having fun, while the middle class spent $3,600. Experience-driven goods and services account for 16–18% of household expenditures for the top 1% and 5% but just 8.2% for the middle class. The top 1–5% spend 50–70% more on experience-driven goods as a share of total expenditures than the average household, while the middle class spends 20–25% less. Finally, the top 1%, 5%, and 10% are spending significantly more on this type of consumption than they did in 1996 (both in absolute dollars and as a share of total expenditures), while everyone else is spending 15–25% less.
One might argue that, aside from the rare few virtuosos, learning the violin by age three equally falls into a category of non-utility. Some things—going to the opera, learning the saxophone (or trying to), and taking exotic holidays—while not performing a utility per se, are also not done for conspicuous status either. Most people who play saxophone aren’t doing it in public, and while the opera can indeed be a social scene for some, others attend for the sheer enjoyment of the music and drama (as is the case for exotic travel and attending museums, for others). This type of experience-driven consumption, not utilitarian and not status-driven, is most prevalent among the upper income groups. Overall they spend five times more on these goods than the middle class. In the case of musical instruments, the wealthy, from the top 10% to the top 1%, all spend significantly more than the middle class (see table 3.5). Similarly, the top income groups spend significantly more on recreation and nonbusiness travel (see table 3.6). While the top 1% spends more in absolute dollars, the top 1%, 5%, and 10% each spend more or less the same share of their total expenditures (around 0.1%), while the middle class spends significantly less both in dollar terms and share of expenditures. This suggests that recreation, like instruments and other inconspicuous goods, is not, and perhaps cannot be, a priority. Post-Recession, the top income groups are spending more on musical instruments and other inconspicuous consumption while the middle class has returned to its pre-Recession conspicuous consumption levels but not its pre-Recession inconspicuous spending levels.
Table 3.5. Spending on musical instruments by income and year (in 2015 dollars)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
113 |
103 |
134 |
99 |
84 |
65 |
77 |
47 |
41 |
37 |
Top 1% |
476 |
134 |
385 |
364 |
310 |
141 |
156 |
83 |
340 |
493 |
Top 5% |
233 |
157 |
215 |
205 |
180 |
124 |
317 |
87 |
135 |
153 |
Top 10% |
207 |
172 |
204 |
189 |
157 |
113 |
226 |
107 |
116 |
101 |
60–89th percentile |
125 |
118 |
191 |
126 |
99 |
80 |
76 |
56 |
41 |
38 |
40–59th percentile |
89 |
96 |
94 |
71 |
61 |
52 |
52 |
32 |
27 |
26 |
0–39th percentile |
74 |
54 |
54 |
43 |
49 |
30 |
27 |
19 |
18 |
17 |
Recent data on luxury holidays illustrate the general trend of the wealthy spending more on experiences and, in the process, pulling further and further away from everyone else. According to Virtuoso, a network of thousands of travel agents, over the past seven years, travelers who spend at least $100,000 annually on trips have increased the rate of their spending two to three times as compared to the “regular traveler” (or those who spend “just” $10,000 annually on trips). National Geographic Expeditions, a company that designs round the world trips to far-flung destinations like the Galapagos and Antarctica, recently offered a 24-day trip (including stops at the aforementioned locations) for $77,000. The trip sold out.30 These “bespoke experiences” are more than just expensive and fun. Traveling like this has the second-order effect of generating cultural capital and symbolic boundaries and numerous non-pecuniary signifiers of being well-rounded, knowledgeable, and probably interesting at dinner parties.
Table 3.6. Spending on recreation by income and year (in 2015 dollars)
1996 |
1998 |
2000 |
2002 |
2004 |
2006 |
2008 |
2010 |
2012 |
2014 |
|
All households |
45 |
45 |
42 |
41 |
41 |
39 |
30 |
28 |
26 |
23 |
Top 1% |
295 |
103 |
163 |
160 |
130 |
182 |
206 |
102 |
102 |
116 |
Top 5% |
148 |
121 |
127 |
117 |
131 |
115 |
127 |
77 |
95 |
60 |
Top 10% |
120 |
114 |
100 |
95 |
104 |
91 |
95 |
75 |
73 |
56 |
60–89th percentile |
54 |
53 |
48 |
52 |
49 |
53 |
33 |
31 |
29 |
28 |
40–59th percentile |
23 |
26 |
23 |
24 |
22 |
21 |
17 |
20 |
15 |
12 |
0–39th percentile |
18 |
16 |
25 |
16 |
14 |
11 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
There’s no question that there exists both a symbolic and an economic boundary between the girl who takes private violin lessons and the girl who does not, as is the case for those who have the luxury to take vacations or can afford nannies. All of these consumption practices create class lines that are more stratifying than conventional goods, because they enable some people to accrue experiences, knowledge, and skills, or what Khan calls a “learned form of capital.” In isolation, whether one knows how to play violin or not isn’t what gets a kid into Harvard (as much as those Tiger Moms wish it to be the case). Rather, the violin is significant in conjunction with all the other experiences and circumstances that matter: whether her parents have the money to send her to an elite preschool and secondary institution, whether they can afford test prep and extracurricular activities that make her an “interesting” applicant, and who in the family’s social networks knows someone at Harvard admissions. Better yet, who else in that little violin-playing girl’s family already graduated from Harvard? This mosaic of attributes is increasingly a necessity for top universities and reveals where inconspicuous consumption is most pronounced and has the greatest implications for inequality and future generations.
I mentioned earlier that the Great Recession fundamentally changed particular consumption habits: The richer households now spend significantly less on conspicuous consumption and more on inconspicuous consumption, while the middle class only slightly reduced its conspicuous consumption through the crisis (returning to pre-Recession conspicuous spending levels) while decreasing its inconspicuous consumption spending post-Recession. As this chapter and the previous one document, the wealthy and the middle class are now exhibiting almost opposite spending patterns. Nowhere is this more evident than in the consumption that counts. In education, health care, pensions, and personal insurance, the top income groups (particularly the top 1%) are spending much more than the middle class both in absolute dollars and in share of total expenditures (see figures 3.3–3.5). These are not small numbers: The top 1–5% spend on average 5% of their total expenditures on education, while the middle class barely spends 1% on education (see figure 3.2). Since the Great Recession, there has been a gradual overall uptick in top income group education spending and a decline in the middle class’s education consumption. In 2014, the top 1% spent 3.5 times more in absolute dollars and share of expenditures on education than they did in 1996. In 2014, they spent 860% more than the national average, while the middle class spent 50% less and the lower income households spent 70% less than the national average on education. Despite skyrocketing college tuition, as a share of expenditures, the poor and middle-class income groups are spending exactly the same as they did in 1996 on education, and less than a quarter of what the top income groups devote as a share of total expenditures. Education is perhaps the biggest tangible example of the divide between the haves and have-nots in America. While the rich are redirecting greater portions of their income to education, the lower income groups are unable to keep up even as a share of expenditures (let alone in absolute dollars). The results suggest that the middle class and lower income groups are not deprioritizing education, but they simply cannot afford the rising tuition fees across all levels of education from preschool to high school to college. According to the Labor Department, college tuition has increased 80% in just ten years (2003–2013), while the cost of other types of consumer goods, like housing and food, has grown at just 23% and 30% respectively, and the overall consumer price index has increased 27% in the same time period (see figure 3.3).31 In major cities, even preschool fees climb into the tens of thousands (yes, that’s tuition for three-year-olds), which was the cost of a good state university education just 15 years ago.
You can argue that there is a conspicuous component to education—most parents brag about where their kid goes to college. But the bragging is still secondary to what education actually provides: knowledge, a degree, social networking opportunities that are essential to get ahead and improve one’s life chances. Unlike in Veblen’s time, when education was thought to serve no real function, today a college education quite literally defines and predicts one’s future income, occupation, and class. Education is essential and perhaps the consumption habit with the greatest utility over the long term.32
Figure 3.2. Spending on education by income and year, dollars and share of total spending. Data source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Figure 3.3. The rate of college tuition compared to other consumer goods.
Source: D. Kurtzleben (2013). “Just how fast has college tuition grown?” U.S. News and World Report.
With regard to health care, the top 1% spends far and away more than everyone else, but all of the upper income groups are spending dramatically more on health care in the post-Recessionary period (see figure 3.4). While the middle class spends the most on health care as a proportion of their total expenditures, the top earners are experiencing the most rapid increase in share devoted to health care. This investment in health paves the way for better day-to-day maintenance of health (and chronic health problems) and better lives as they grow older. Preventative health care is a crucial component of overall well-being, and the ability to invest ongoing in one’s health is indicative of overall quality of life. In addition, the best health insurance often garners the best health care. The rise of “concierge medicine” requires a patient to pay an annual fee or retainer for Fee for Care or Fee for Extra Care (FFC or FFEC), which means that a doctor limits her number of patients to provide additional time and greater care for those who are willing to pay a premium.33
Perhaps most alarming, the top 1% are spending significantly more in terms of both absolute dollars and share of total expenditures on personal insurance and pensions: about 20% of the top 1%’s expenditures are in this category, compared to 8% for the middle class. In 2014, this distinction amounted to an average of $32,500 a year for each top 1% household and less than $4,000 for the average middle-class household (the top 5% and 10% households were spending $20,000–$22,000 in 2014) (see figure 3.5). Again, these investments allow the top income groups to maintain a better quality of life into retirement in a way that the middle-class and low-income groups cannot afford to. Thus, top income groups are not just living good lives in the present but making sure this standard is maintained into the future and for family members should anything happen to them. Far more expensive than more obvious signs of status like a watch or bag or car, these investments genuinely shape life chances and intergenerational mobility.
Figure 3.4. Spending on health care by income and year, dollars and share of total spending. Data source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Figure 3.5. Spending on retirement by income and year, dollars and share of total spending. Data source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If you have more money you can afford the more expensive elements of life—education, health, and retirement savings. Ironically, despite the fact that all of these items are essential for a good life and create lifelong returns, they are also the investments that are most out of reach, particularly for the middle class and the poor. A financed SUV, perhaps signaling some upwardly mobile position, is fairly affordable to a middle-class household, and is significantly less expensive than a top university’s tuition fees, or putting away the requisite 15% a year for retirement. Good health insurance costs thousands of dollars a year, and that does not include anything that might be considered a specialty health cost, like allergy testing or dermatology. The increase in disparity is not a result of the middle class spending less on these categories as much as it is a result of the rich spending significantly more (see figures 3.3–3.5). In fact, Hyojung Lee and my colleague Gary Painter have documented what they believe is a rising inequality in spending on “key human investment categories” after the Great Recession. A look at general consumption patterns would suggest that the gains brought forth by the Industrial Revolution and mass production have given everyone a chance at the good life. But no matter how many Coach handbags and minivans a middle-class family consumes, it’s not the same as having the available funds to send one’s child to Princeton. Even more alarming, Lee and Painter find that the vast differences in education spending between the wealthy and the middle- and lower-income groups does not start with college but rather at a much earlier age (elementary and secondary school tuitions), which sets in motion the divergence across socioeconomic classes more than a decade in advance, making it nearly impossible to catch up.34 We may find a leveling of the playing field in conspicuous consumption, but cost-prohibitive inconspicuous consumption has become the new division between the rich and the rest.
In thinking about these types of inconspicuous goods, I am reminded of a chilling passage of C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite. Mills, a mid-twentieth-century Columbia University sociologist, was concerned that the elites of America were finding ways to make upward mobility virtually impossible for everyone else. In arenas of life that impacted life chances for oneself and society as a whole—politics, government, public figures, prestigious occupations, and degrees—the elites kept everyone else out. The problem with this pattern was that they then became the people who made decisions for all of society. The elites essentially created an “accumulation of advantages” and were only invested in other elites and their interests, leaving aside the concerns of everyone else. Mills did not believe this situation was actively nefarious, but it was sinister nonetheless because the disregard for others’ concerns created an even greater divide between this “power elite” and everyone else. “The upper social classes have come to include a variety of members concerned with power in its several contexts, and these concerns are shared among the members of the clubs, the cousin-hoods, the firms, the law offices … They spread into various commanding circles of the institutions of power,” Mills writes. “Accordingly, in the inner circles of the upper classes, the most impersonal problems of the largest and most important institutions are fused with the sentiments and worries of small, closed, intimate groups … Without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be—if not the conviction that they are—The Ones Who Decide.”35 Mills’s observation could never be truer than it is today.
In the twenty-first century, elites are further reaffirming their position by spending more on those goods and experiences that radically inform and shape their quality of life and future success and intergenerational mobility. This pattern of spending is apparent in the choices of wealthy members of the aspirational class, and more broadly, the top income groups. With their nonmaterial choices on what to spend on, these new elites are deviating even more from the consumer patterns of the middle class, never mind the lower income groups and the truly poor. These deviations create the norms, symbolic boundaries, and cultural capital that exclude everyone else, and make very obvious the differences between these two disconnected societies. Further, and more disconcerting, the things the wealthy aspirational class actually spend money on—education, health care, child care (not silver spoons, fancy cars, or fine china)—are the very things that build social capital and create class boundaries across generations that are almost impossible to overcome with material goods. Because paying for elite universities may seem more laudable than spending on silver spoons, and the aspirational class work hard to earn the money to pay the tuition, they may believe that their position is richly deserved. The fortunate children at the receiving end of those tuitions and violin lessons will also believe that their social position is more deserved than the birthright elites of previous eras. They have spent their entire life learning musical instruments and second languages, and taking test prep courses, such that they believe they have earned their position. Perhaps in some instances this observation is fair. But as Khan has pointed out in his work on this new meritocratic elite, of which many of the aspirational class are members, “Meritocracy is a social arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure advantages, all the while justifying them on the basis of shared values.”36 So yes, students at Princeton likely work hard, but many are in an elite position, financially and culturally, from the beginning, to even be accepted to such a prestigious university in the first place. Along the way, most students have acquired the sorts of knowledge and cultural capital that make it easy to assimilate into the Princeton student body. Research by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger suggest that it is not elite education in and of itself that produces upward mobility. (In fact, Dale and Krueger conclude that it is likely “unobserved characteristics” that explain the success of those who attend elite universities, rather than the universities themselves.)37,38 The blending of values, information, and class is becoming more stratified than ever and almost impossible to untangle. As the next two chapters will show, aspirational class consumption patterns are often imbued with a sense of morality and deservedness. The essential privilege that gives rise to such practices and behaviors in the first place is all but ignored.
