Luxury Beliefs: They Diss Our Values to Gain Status

To understand where our nation needs to go, we are looking first at where we are.

Rob Henderson, an American Ph.D candidate at Cambridge (U.K.), tells us what he means by “luxury beliefs.”

In the past, upper-class Americans displayed status with luxury goods. Now it's luxury beliefs. We know people care a lot about social status. Admiration from our peers means more than money to our sense of well-being.


And we face pressure to display status in new ways, which is why fashionable clothing always changes. What’s happening now is that clothes and other goods have become more accessible, so the rich draw increasingly less status from luxury goods.

The replacement: luxury beliefs — ideas and opinions that confer status on the elite at little cost to them, while harming the rest of us.

For example, the idea that all family structures are equal. It’s not true. Families with two married parents help young children most. But strangely, affluent, educated people raised by two married parents are more likely to believe monogamy is outdated, marriage is a sham, or that all families are the same.

Affluent American marriage rates match those of the 1960s. But working-class people are far less likely to get married, while out-of-wedlock birthrates are more than 10 times higher than they were in 1960, mostly among poor and working class.

Another luxury belief is that religion is irrational, even harmful. Upper class members tend to be atheists or non-religious. Yet places of worship are often central to poor communities. Denigrating religion harms the poor.

And there’s work. Affluent people often find meaning in what they do, but most Americans do not have the luxury of a “profession.” They have jobs. They clock in, they clock out. Without family or community, a job can feel meaningless.

Then there’s the luxury belief that individual decisions don’t matter compared to random social forces, including luck. Students at prestige universities work ceaselessly while downplaying tenacity with an “aw, shucks” routine. When disadvantaged people believe luck explains success, they’ll be less likely to strive.

And, of course, “white privilege.” Upper-class members believe racial disparities come from inherent white advantages, even though Asian Americans are more educated, have higher earnings, and live longer.

Affluent whites who promote “white privilege” are the least likely to pay a price. They actually gain status by “confessing” high status. Laws that combat white privilege won’t harm them; poor whites will suffer.

Henderson concludes, “expect the upper class to defame even more values in their quest to gain top-dog status.”

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