[ahartman00]

You have it backwards. Advertising works because advertisers know what people want. And people WANT social status.

"We even find that relative income is more important than absolute income in explaining individual well-being. More precisely, we find that the income relative to individuals’ own cohort working in the same occupation group and living in the same region matters for happiness" [1]

"To the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means of either attaining or maintaining a given social status." [2]

1. http://www.uh.edu/~cguven/papers/JonesesCahit_SEP262007.pdf

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption

[czep]

These conspicuous consumers are only fooling themselves. If my neighbor spends 4x on his car compared to me, it certainly doesn't make me feel inferior in any way. If anything it makes me feel sorry for him -- must be overcompensating for some other shortcoming.

Yes I've read Veblen so I understand the theory and psychology behind these tactics that advertising exploits (especially luxury advertising), but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom such shallow status markers have no effect.

[ahartman00]

These conspicuous consumers... are a very important part of the economy :) Think about how many engineering and design jobs there are just creating fancier/faster/prettier/etc versions of basic goods. And if the consumer if happy, whats wrong? A lot of that money would just be sitting in a bank somewhere otherwise. Yes, I know some people would donate it to charity.

"but there are plenty of people, men and women, for whom "

Sorry, I didn't mean to generalize all people. I should have said "a large portion of people".