| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.05
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Luxury Fever: Weighing the Cost of Excess for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.05, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Frank's analysis should be just as interesting to those who do not share his political position as to those who do. -- Samuel Brittan, Times Literary Supplement
One does not have to be the kind of person who complains about fat-cat City salaries to wonder whether certain wealthy people are not, on the one hand, rich beyond utility, and spending their money on things that no sane consumer needs, on the other. Robert Frank's thoughtful study of conspicuous consumption . . . has a dreadful fascination. -- "Sunday Times
The shop-till-you-drop, 'retail therapy' culture may have become more dominant in the last few years. . . . But are we really any happier for it? One person who thinks we are not is Robert Frank . . . whose new book, Luxury Fever, has been causing a bit of a stir. . . . The burst of consumerism in the U.S. . . . gives a new bite to these well-rehearsed concerns. -- "The Independent
Review
Browse and search another edition of this book.
The propane grill I bought during the 1980s has been on a downhill slide for several years. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
To make things worse: Americans spend less on vital public services which leads to a deteriorating infrastructure, to higher crime, to dirty streets and parks, to water pollution, to a deteriorating education system, etc. And what about health? 40 million Americans currently lack health insurance.... This book explains how there is a competition 1) between different forms of private spending (do we buy luxury or do we spend our money differently?) and 2) between private and public spending. To expand on the latter point: a growing share of the US national income is spent on consumption and spending on vital publics services is increasingly threatened.
Frank explains (on the basis of well-being research and the adaptation-level theory) that the main reason we buy luxury goods is to demonstrate to others that we can afford to thereby trying to distinguish ourselves from them. In doing so we try to achieve happiness by improving our relative status. The irony is, however, this absolutely doesn't work! The satisfaction we get from luxury spending, which Frank calls conspicuous spending, depends largely on context. The satisfaction we get from luxury spending lasts only shortly. Two examples: 1) If we buy an expensive car, this distinguishes us from our neighbour and we feel happy. If, however, next month our neighbour buys an even fancier one, our satisfaction will be largely gone. You can see how this leads to an escalation, an arms race, with no winners. 2) The satisfaction we get from luxury goods tends to decline steeply over time. We tend to get used quickly to what we have and the favourable features of the luxury good tend to fade into the background rapidly: we no longer notice the fancy features of our expensive car and our satisfaction diminishes. Bottom line: this increasing conspicuous spending does more harm than good.
We have to discourage conspicuous consumption in favour of inconspicuous consumption. Frank explains that no individual or family alone can solve this problem. It has to be solved at a higher level. He proposes a simple but effective measure to discourage conspicuous consumption, a progressive consumption tax levied on consumption rather than income. Frank claims this tax can stimulate radical changes in the ways we lead our lives. Contrary to the believe of many, he convincingly argues, this progressive consumption tax would not cripple the economy but invigorate it. A fascinating book also highly relevant for European countries I think.
We all know the syndrome. We are surrounded by technological gadgets we have bought that we don't know how to use. We don't know how to use them, because we don't need them. What do all those "features" on your video really do? In the western world we all seem to have more than we need, but we don't seem to be any happier. Why? Robert Frank addresses this question and provides explanations based on some very simple theories of human (and animal) behaviour. He shows how the adaptability of humans makes them impervious to material gains in the long run. He explains why it is relative wealth that interests us, not absolute wealth. He expounds the "smart for one, dumb for all" theory that explains why "l'enfer c'est les autres".
He appears to have no axe to grind and examines all issues from both an economic and sociological perspective. Having explained the malaise, he goes further in proposing a solution that may be eminently workable and which really might reverse the ridiculous materialistic spiral in which we find ourselves.
I can't recommend this book too highly. For those of us bored with political spin promising us a future Eldorado in which we will all be deliriously happy, this book deals with those same questions in an apolitical way and provides far more intelligent answers.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
