Conspicuous Consumption But It's Not Crazy Summary

As each and every social class, there are differences inside each one, same goes to the high class. There will be wealthy who are conspicuous consumers and wealthy who are frugal with their money. A personal experience of mine is that my finance professor who is wealthy also is very frugal with his money. That goes to show that not all wealthy are conspicuous consumers. Veblen argues that the wealthy are known to be conspicuous consumers and that the wealthy mostly invest in superfluous goods. Veblen defines "conspicuous consumption" as "consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure" (Veblen 4). In his New York Times editorial "Conspicuous Consumption? Yes, but It's Not Crazy", Robert H. Frank emphasizes that the wealthy are not conspicuous consumers, and they likewise are frugal with their money just as the other classes. Frank explains that the wealthy are money conscious for the …show more content…
Yes, but It's Not Crazy" might appeal to a wide variety of readers since it can educate the reader from its accessible yet informative style, it is to a certain extent effective because it has a number of logical fallacies and displays a large amount of lack of …show more content…
To be specific, he challenges Veblen in "The Theory of the Leisure Class", by using the 21st-century perspective and by saying that the wealthy don't crave to spend mindlessly on luxury goods. Veblen's article argues that the wealthy are conspicuous consumers, however, Frank argues Veblen by saying that they are in fact money conscious. Frank states "If they were merely chasing Veblen goods, the rich would be easily exploited by the purveyors of luxury items." (Frank 2). It is, in fact, true what Frank is saying seeing otherwise that the wealthy would be losing a great quantity of money or become bankrupt. The wealthy instead obtain goods that are valuable to them or goods they actually