Today's White Collar Crime by Brightman Hank J.;Brightman Hank J.;Howard Lindsey W.;

Author:Brightman, Hank J.;Brightman, Hank J.;Howard, Lindsey W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Reading 6–2: Neil Steinberg, Running After the Joneses

In his classic text, The Theory of the Leisure Class, sociologist Thorstein Veblen explores the reasons why those living in Western cultures feel it is more important to appear wealthy than to actually be financial secure. In this article, author Neil Steinberg explores this phenomenon using his own life as an example. As you enjoy this reading, consider what you would do if you were in the author’s situation.

The neighbors threw a party Saturday night. My wife made her mango chutney dip and set it on a glass plate with crackers. Then we trooped over to join other neighbors who were drinking red wine out of delicate glasses, digging into various cheeses and admiring the candles floating in bowls.

Nothing about the party wasn’t fun. They had archery in back for the kids. A raffle to benefit leukemia research. Chips and salsa, fancy cookies and Mexican spiced coffee. The host even tapped me to sneak out and smoke a cigar under the starlight.

Yet I came home troubled, burdened, worried about something that I had difficulty even expressing to my wife. Their furniture, it was so … so … nice. The sofa, with its thick embroidered upholstery, shot through with gold thread, that looks as if it came from a medieval French tapestry. The writing desk. The little cabinet.

So nice, and so much of it: chairs and love seats and sofas and ottomans and God knows what else. Our furniture, which had been so new when we bought it, suddenly looked threadbare and tattered and completely unacceptable.

“We need new furniture,” I informed my wife, gravely.

Call it envy. Call it competitiveness. Call it a desire to meet community standards. But the need to keep up with the Joneses both spurs our personal working lives and drives our national economy, and most of us don’t realize it.

Your immediate reaction might be denial. Keeping up with the neighbors? Such a lumpen worry. Not an emotion worthy of an independent-minded go-getter like you. No way.

But do you mow your lawn? Paint your house? Clean it? Are your bookshelves made of cinder block? The need to keep up is woven so deeply into our culture it can be hard to recognize. How many automobile commercials have you seen where the new car is proudly unveiled in the driveway to the eye-popping wonder of the hapless next-door neighbor, who glances back at his own jalopy, sitting in his driveway, with mingled remorse and shame?

On the surface, this is completely irrational. Who cares whether your neighbor—someone you might not even like—admires your car or not? You sure didn’t sound out his wishes before you bought it. “Hey, Hank, I’m thinking about a Land Rover—that OK with you?”

So obviously you aren’t buying the car to win his approval. Or are you? Could you really be standing in the showroom, deciding what your neighbor will envy most, and not even know it?

Many economists would say yes. Why else would anyone buy a $50,000 Lexus instead of a $5,000 used Pontiac? They will both get you where you’re going.

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