Working-class lads and lasses make far more effort to look good when they’re out because no one is going to want them for their pay cheque; wealthy people can afford to look effortlessly casual.
Working-class nightclubs ban trainers and demand shirts with collars; posh nightclubs have no such rules.
Working class lads who earn a decent wedge in areas which still have affordable rents will quite likely be spending more on their car than their rent.
Struggling salesmen go out and buy a new car because projecting success is part of their means to be successful. (No, I do not understand why you wouldn’t look at a rep in a Porsche and think “they’re overcharging, I’ll go elsewhere” but, apparently,this is what they do.)
It’s easy to sneer at the wealthy indulging in these behaviours (and we should, of course, sneer). But there’s nothing strange or startling. They’re just doing it from a much wealthier base with a much stronger safety net because daddy will always be there to pay off the credit card.
$1 million isn't nearly as much or as impressive as it used to be. I'm not saying it isn't impressive, but inflation has eroded the value (and increased wages). Often those who have $1 million have it locked away in retirement accounts that they cannot touch so they are on paper rich, but in practice don't have as much today (the savings needed to get that much in assets mean they are living on much less than their peers - thus they appear much less wealthy than their peers who are not saving)
Even actual wealthy people exaggerate their wealth. That’s why Trump covers everything in gaudy gold paint. He has to appear to be richer than Croesus.
This is normal for all generations. Back in the 1990s the then popular 'the millionair nextdoor' couldn't find any rich people living in rich areas. They had to go to the poor run down neighborhoods to find people who had real wealth. (their neighbors were mostly the really poor just barly getting buy, but mixed in where some of the true rich)
When he was a little boy, Sam Vimes had thought that the very rich ate off gold plates and lived in marble houses.
He’d learned something new: the very very rich could afford to be poor. Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets.
It reminds me of the commercial from a few years back where they’re like “Bob, you have a nice car, big house and inground pool. How did you do it?!” and he responds happily “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs!”
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