Friday, March 18, 2011

Taken Back


Reading The Truth About Cars tonight whilst enjoying NCAA games. Came across a random comment that took me back.

"This Cadillac reminds me of those paper cups that have a little folded handle pasted to their sides so that you can pretend to have a Royal Dalton porceline tea cup from which to sip.

It is wonderful when the average guy can purchase faux luxury. It helps keep down the cost of luxury itself and forces it to continually refine itself in order to justify it’s price. What is completely wicked is when the average guy doesn’t recognize faux luxury as faux. He begins to devalue items around him when they do not appear to be elegant and can end up mopeing around spending money he doesn’t have in pursuit of costly goods.

How many tweens do we see schlepping around in $40 t-shirts that appear so wretched their own assembly-line working grandfathers won’t have cleaned the garage floor with it? Faux luxury can be enjoyed, but like anything else, it can lead to McMansions, $30,000 Hondas, $300 Levis, bankrupsy and striking public employees with salaries over $80,000."

Well said. And on the eve of my annual Columbus Auto Show visit. Glad I caught it.

Read it again before you move on to the rest of the internets.

It reminds me of something I was once told about luxury and convenience. "What difference does electric light have when you have servants to light the candles for you?". We have a lot of folks pretending out there... and spending way too much to pretend they have things they really don't.

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