Relative status value makes one million dollars insufficient for millionaire living

Evidence

Since status position is relative, status value is also relative. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu writes that, for each layer of society, “What is rare and constitutes an inaccessible luxury or an absurd fantasy for those at an earlier or lower level becomes banal and common.” This plays out in the most famous passage of Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities; the protagonist, Sherman McCoy, is “going broke on a million dollars a year” because his bond-trading income is insufficient to maintain the expectations of New York upper-crust life. To keep up with his peers, he must shell out huge sums for club dues, luxury clothing, designer furniture, tuition at top-rank private schools, and children’s birthday parties with carnival rides. Bourdieu explains predicaments like McCoy’s: “Having a million does not in itself make one able to live like a millionaire, and parvenus generally take a long time to learn that what they see as culpable prodigality is, in their new condition, expenditure of basic necessity.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 156

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The Sherman McCoy logic — each status tier has its own escalating baseline of ‘basic necessity’ that can bankrupt the parvenu — is a rich engine for a novel about sudden wealth straining against an invisible cost-of-rank ceiling.
• XREF: connects to: Status is zero-sum and cannot rise for everyone at once — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 73; A person can be socially poor yet individually wealthy — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 439; Status congruence across capital forms entrenches inequality despite meritocracy — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 90 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A person can be socially poor yet individually wealthy #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 439
• Status congruence across capital forms entrenches inequality despite meritocracy #corroborates (0.72) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 90
• True wealth is a single empty space rather than accumulated possessions #complicates (0.72) — Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 493