‘The Lifestyle Ratchet’

Aaron Renn writes:

These are class markers that help demarcate the in group from the out group.

It isn’t precisely required to engage in all this stuff, but if you aspire to be a professional in a corporate setting, you’ll set yourself apart from your prospective colleagues if you don’t live at least something of this lifestyle. Top talent or other high status people can get away with flouting conventions. Most people can’t.

People understand that most upper middle class people realistically can’t deliberately go against many social trends, such as by explicitly rejecting Black Lives Matter or DEI. But similar effects are true for some consumption activities as well. If you want to avoid them, you have to somehow frame it as aspirationally higher status, such as by saying a spartan lifestyle is all about the environment or something.

The net result is a society that pushes people towards conformity with higher consumption norms, and to embrace patterns of life that might even be unhealthy (such as kids having smart phones).