People Different From Us

Cindy McCain's outfit at the Republican Convention Monday night reportedly cost $300,000.

Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure, whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the obvious implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer's good fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be reputable it must be wasteful. -- Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption, 1902