[angli]

There most certainly is. You've pointed out some exceptions but do you really think that on the whole they're not correlated? Having more money means people can afford to dress better and are more likely to travel in circles in which dressing well is important.

This may be a bad thing, but it's a reality that people are attuned to - it's a useful heuristic even though it's imperfect. Should you treat people badly because of it? No, but you shouldn't treat them badly even if you were 100% sure they weren't wealthy. That's a separate problem.

[jsmthrowaway]

Okay, but ask yourself if that's an actual correlation or an imagined one based on customs and psychological factors. (Which is my point.)

The assertion was that "there is a relationship," without any sort of qualification. I'm saying that relationship only exists because of the belief itself and if we all stopped believing it tomorrow, there would be no relationship any longer. So it's not really a correlation at all and only an imaginary one that has largely built itself up on conditioning, upbringing, and so on.

I'm not saying you're wrong nor denying a tenuous correlation, I'm saying it's faulty to assume a correlation where one only exists due to external factors, and that leads to the problems that both you and I point out with the correlation.

[polarix]

> if we all stopped believing it tomorrow

Similarly, money provides no power in society to the person controlling it. Because if we all stopped believing that it would continue to work in the future, it wouldn't.

... This is an obviously incorrect argument! There are things that occur only because of widespread belief. Nevertheless, those things do occur!