Mass Elitsm

by phil on Thursday Oct 2, 2003 1:07 PM
societal observations

You're Not Rich, but Now You Can Fake It
How Starbucks coffee, BMW cars, and Godiva chocolates have become luxuries for the masses.
By Daniel Gross

But what club precisely are people who buy the new $27,800 BMW 3-Series joining? The club of people who can afford to pay $27,800 for a cheap BMW but can't afford a "real" one?

...

Christopher Lasch. His devastating 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism, looms over their entire project. The American narcissist, Lasch wrote, "does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."