In the past, if you wanted to know who was wealthy in your society, you didn't have to look hard. The wealthy often flaunted their wealth through luxury goods. To be fair, many still do, but today's wealthy, especially the young, display their wealth in different ways.
Author Rob Henderson, who penned the book "Troubled," dove into the "luxury belief," which is how the modern wealthy and elite display their status to everyone else. Instead of clothes that make them look sharply dressed and jewelry studded with gemstones, their clothing looks cheap or ill-fitting, despite the fact that they probably paid multiple months of minimum wage paychecks to get a single item.
But more importantly is the beliefs they espouse. The wealthy will say things that have no grounding in common sense, but say them with such conviction that it's fairly convincing to anyone who doesn't know any better. Moreover, these beliefs aren't just ludicrous when you stop to think about them, they're outright harmful.
While on the Spiked podcast, Henderson covered one of these beliefs, the belief that we should "defund the police."
As he says, you'll notice some interesting things about the call that went up a few years ago to strip police of all their funding. Many a wealthy Democrat was wholly in favor of "reimagining" the police. However, black and Hispanic communities were far less enthusiastic.
Henderson noted that the "loud" displays of wealth have largely disappeared, and have now been replaced with the wish to separate yourself from the unwashed masses by attending Universities and adopting the manner of speech and beliefs systems therein. Today, this means standing apart from traditional and proven views.
"So, if the conventional view is 'it's good to have law enforcement,' well if you want to indicate you're not a part of the unwashed masses, you say 'actually, we should abolish the police and reimagine how law enforcement works,' and hire violence interrupters and all these strange, newfangled ideas."
This allows the elite to present themselves as caring and "one of the folks," in an age where wealth is demonized.
The issue is that this kind of thinking is ultimately harmful and gets a lot of people hurt and killed, including police officers and people in low-income neighborhoods. The experience caused a lot of Democrat voters in the black and Hispanic communities, many of whom didn't want their local police defunded in the first place, to see a large drop in the "defund the police" approval ratings.
According to Pew, black and Hispanic people saw a big drop from 2020 to 2021, but white Democrats still continued to believe that defunding the police was the right move:
Among Democrats, Black (38%) and Hispanic (39%) adults are more likely than White adults (32%) to say spending on police in their area should be increased. There is no significant difference across these racial and ethnic groups in the share of adults who say spending should be decreased.
The people who have the luxury to believe the police should be defunded because they experience safer neighborhoods and possibly greater police presence are still happy to insist on defunding law enforcement while those in poorer neighborhoods want to see funding increased as they're the primary victims of the resulting crime waves.
You can also see this pop up in what many of the wealthy elite profess to believe about events overseas. College-aged Americans love to endorse "pro-Palestine" beliefs which truthfully translate to pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, and ultimately, anti-Israel views. They shout about the need to "free Palestine" and accuse Israel of genocide. Obviously, this is far from the actual truth. Israel is not on a mission of genocide, and the war it's waging, while offensive, is ultimately defensive. Its enemies have openly announced their genocidal intentions.
Yet, these college students from high-cost colleges can say these things because they won't face any real consequences for their actions. It's perfectly fine to advocate for the success of terrorist groups because those terrorist groups will never be a threat to these students. However, these students can be seen defying conventional thought and rejecting traditional ideas, marking them as understanding and akin to whom they see as the downtrodden.
The thought virus that is transgenderism can also fall into the category of luxury beliefs, and while you may say that even the poor and middle class have been roped up into this idea, it should be noted that this is one of the few elitist beliefs one can display at very little cost. Much like a person would have a knock-off Gucci bag in order to appear wealthier than they actually are, people of all economic levels will adopt attitudes on transgenderism to blend in with one another, the elite to look like they're off the people, and the peasantry to seem like they're in the same group as elites.
To the left, wealth is a sin, so you have to strike an attitude or have an opinion, that makes it seem as if your own wealth is something to detest. Outwardly displaying your wealth is considered grotesque. For instance, Donald Trump is one of the rich elite, but he wears his wealth outwardly and isn't ashamed of it, and that makes him a villain.
All in all, these luxury beliefs are the ultimate mark of a spoiled brat. It's enjoying a consequence free life while breaking things around you and showing absolute disrespect to anyone who might stand in your way or disagree with you. It's the allowance of pretending to be against wealth and for being "like folks," while indulging in a super wealthy lifestyle at the same time.
