Luxury Items Quotes

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.

There's a type of person who thinks he's getting away with something by not believing in anything. But not believing in anything IS believing in something. It's active, not passive. To believe in nothing is to change nothing. It means you're endorsing the present, and the present is a horror[...] Irreverence is the ultimate luxury item.

Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity.

But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.

What was once a home she had taken apart one piece at a time, one day...She sold her belongings for money to buy food.  First the luxuries: a small statue, a picture.  Then the items with more utility: a lamp, a kettle.  Clothes left the closet at a rate of a garment a day…she burned everything in the basement first; then everything in the attic.  It lasted weeks, not months.  Though tempted, she left the roof alone.  She stripped the second floor, and the stairs.  She extracted every possible calorie from the kitchen.  she wasn’t working alone, because neighbourhood pirates simultaneously stole anything of value outside: door and window frames, fencing, stucco.  They pillaged her yard.  Breaking in was a boundary her neigbours had not yet crossed.  But the animals had.  Rats and mice and other vermin found the cracks without much effort.  Like her, they sought warmth and scraps of food.  With great reluctance, she roasted the ones she could catch.  She spent her nights fighting off the ones that escaped.

Angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self pity.

There is an inverse relationship between the time spent purchasing luxury items such as cars and clothes and the time spent planning one’s financial future.

The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power.

You need to allow yourself at least one or two grand extravagances in your life. Not extras, I’m talking big enchilada extravagances. If you have a dream item, one you’ve always wanted—a fancy car, a vacation home, a luxurious trip—if you can afford it, go for it. You need to get it out of your system, love it, and then move on with life.

Exploitation thrives when it comes to the essentials, like housing and food. Most of the 12 million Americans who take out high-interest payday loans do so not to buy luxury items or cover unexpected expenses but to pay the rent or gas bill, buy food, or meet other regular expenses. Payday loans are but one of many financial techniques—from overdraft fees to student loans for for-profit colleges—specifically designed to pull money from the pockets of the poor.46 If the poor pay more for their housing, food, durable goods, and credit, and if they get smaller returns on their educations and mortgages (if they get returns at all), then their incomes are even smaller than they appear. This is fundamentally unfair.

Luxury can be a great experience, and the things around you should represent the life that you’ve made for yourself, as long as you are taking the time to appreciate those items.

Here is a postcard from the other side: fame, luxury items and glamour are not real and cannot solve you, whether it’s a pair of shoes, a stream of orgies, a movie career or global adulation. They are just passing clouds of imaginary pleasure.

Luxury items are those things that are mass-produced by a third party and marketed to us to purchase so that we can express our individuality.

The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. Julius

I think the sorts of people who honestly think that service workers should be more smiley and gracious just don’t get it. They don’t get it because they can take so much for granted in their own lives—things like respect, consideration, and basic fairness on the job. Benefits. Insurance. They’re used to the luxury of choosing the most aesthetically pleasing item on the shelf, of caring what color their car is rather than simply whether it runs or not. They don’t understand how depressing it is to be barely managing your life at any given moment of the day. So forgive me if I don’t tell you to have a pleasant day with unfeigned enthusiasm when I hand you your fucking hamburger. You’ll have to settle for the fake sort.

Our culture reinforces accumulation, spending on luxury items and focusing too much time on material things instead of experiences and relationships. We’ve been taught the false narrative that more stuff equals greater happiness.

If you've ever taken a sub, you'll know they have available every luxury item the weary traveller could ever wish to purchase. Drinks, food, perfumes, clothes, blankets, anything. These compartments weren't empty, but I doubt the weary traveller was really in the market for a selection of low and high powered pistols, assault rifles, armour piercing rounds and the variety of explosive devices on offer. Unless they were on the way to a Christmas family get-together.

We need a viable business model. We are in a noble profession. We are not selling luxury items or anything fancy. We actually come to your rescue when things go wrong. If you buy health insurance, it is less than the cost of a dinner at this hotel.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

But apart from that single expensive item, she stayed away from the high-dollar racks. Luxury was all well and good for a Fae prince, but what would she do with a pair of six-hundred-dollar Gucci boots? She'd be afraid to walk in them. Probably trip and break an ankle or something, and wasn't there some old fairy tale about stolen shoes that punished the thief? She knew better than most people that fairy tales had a twisted way of coming true. She slipped into jeans and laced up tennis shoes. A sturdy pair of hiking boots went into the satchel. She was done before he was. Figured. And when he returned, he was wearing dark, tattooed Armani jeans, with a sheer white silk tee and six-hundred dollar Gucci boots. Which also figured.

Nowadays we live in a world where poor teenagers are willing to maim and murder for a pair of tennis shoes or a designer coat; this is not a consequence of poverty. In dire situations of poverty at earlier times in our nation's history, it would have been unthinkable to the poor to murder someone for a luxury item. While it was common for individuals to steal or attack in the interests of acquiring resources - money, food or something as simple as a winter coat to ward off the cold - there was no value system in place that made a life less important than the material desire for an inessential object.

That’s what money wanted. It wanted to be spent. And it really wanted to be spent on luxury items. Its greatest thrill was just to be gambled away. It wanted to change hands. It wanted to find itself at the racetrack, it wanted to be thrown into the center of the table at a casino. Money is a masochist.

In the nineteenth century, elites alone obeyed the laws of fashion, exchanging old possessions for new ones for no other reason than that they had gone out of style. Economic orthodoxy condemned the rest of society to a life of drudgery and mere subsistence. The mass production of luxury items now extends aristocratic habits to the masses.

Women are the only “oppressed” group to share the same parents as the “oppressor”; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the “oppressor”; to own more of the culture’s luxury items than the “oppressor”; the only “oppressed” group whose “unpaid labor” enables them to buy most of the fifty billion dollars’ worth of cosmetics sold each year; the only “oppressed” group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing than their “oppressors”; the only “oppressed” group that watches more TV during every time category than their “oppressors.”33 Feminists often compare marriage to slavery—with the female as slave. It seems like an insult to women’s intelligence to suggest that marriage is female slavery when we know it is 25 million American females34 who read an average of twenty romance novels per month,35 often with the fantasy of marriage. Are feminists suggesting that 25 million American women have “enslavement” fantasies because they fantasize marriage? Is this the reason Danielle Steele is the best-selling author in the world?

Exploitation thrives when it comes to the essentials, like housing and food. Most of the 12 million Americans who take out high-interest payday loans do so not to buy luxury items or cover unexpected expenses but to pay the rent or gas bill, buy food, or meet other regular expenses. Payday loans are but one of many financial techniques—from overdraft fees to student loans for for-profit colleges—specifically designed to pull money from the pockets of the poor.46 If the poor pay more for their housing, food, durable goods, and credit, and if they get smaller returns on their educations and mortgages (if they get returns at all), then their incomes are even smaller than they appear. This is fundamentally unfair. Those

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

I don’t know about your parental units, but mine really have it together when it comes to laundry. They have it together in many other ways, such as having a fully stocked fridge at all times—and not just with the basics, like bread, milk, and eggs. I’m talking about luxury spices that you might only see in a wicker basket on Chopped, vegan food items that Oprah has endorsed, and enough produce to make a fresh summer salad whenever the mood strikes. Just like when Honey Boo Boo said everyone is a little bit gay, it seems like every parent is a little bit Gwyneth Paltrow: the Goop Years after the kids leave the house. And Ma and Pa Robinson are no exception.

With as yet no house of my own to keep, I had little that needed buying, but enjoyed myself in browsing among the newly replenished shelves, for the pure joy of seeing lots of things for sale again. It had been a long time of rationing, of doing without the simple things like soap and eggs, and even longer without the minor luxuries of life, like L’Heure Bleu cologne. My gaze lingered on a shop window filled with household goods—embroidered tea cloths and cozies, pitchers and glasses, a stack of quite homely pie tins, and a set of three vases. I had never owned a vase in my life. During the war years, I had, of course, lived in the nurses’ quarters, first at Pembroke Hospital, later at the field station in France. But even before that, we had lived nowhere long enough to justify the purchase of such an item. Had I had such a thing, I reflected, Uncle Lamb would have filled it with potsherds long before I could have got near it with a bunch of daisies.

Good luck. For most of my generation, it would just go to student debt and cocktails. If anything came to me (an impossibility), I would dump it into a poorly managed career in edgy luxury items. You can’t make opera money on perfume that smells like cunts and gasoline. At any rate, I didn’t usually make an appearance beyond the gala. Or, I hadn’t until recently. But Joseph Eisner had promised me a fortune, and now he wouldn’t take my calls. He did, however, like his chamber music. It had been an acquired taste for me. In my distant undergraduate past, when circumstance sat me in front of an ensemble, I spent the first five minutes of each concert deciding which musician I would fuck if I had the chance, and the rest shifting minutely in my seat. I still couldn’t stand Chanel. And while I had learned to appreciate—indeed, enjoy—chamber ensembles, orchestras, and on occasion even the opera, I retained my former habit as a dirty amusement to add some private savor to the proceedings. Tonight, it was the violist, weaving and bobbing his way through Dvořák’s Terzetto in C Major like a sinuous dancer. I prefer the romantics—fewer hair-raising harmonies than modern fare, and certainly more engaging than funereal baroque. The intriguing arrangement of the terzetto kept me engaged, in that slightly detached and floating manner engendered by instrumental performance. Moreover, the woman to my left, one row ahead, was wearing Salome by Papillon. The simple fact of anyone wearing such a scent in public pleased me. So few people dared wear anything at all these days, and when they did, it was inevitably staid: an inoffensive classic or antiseptic citrus-and-powder. But this perfume was one I might have worn myself. Jasmine, yes, but more indolic than your average floral. People sometimes say it smells like dirty panties. As the trio wrapped up for intermission, I took a steadying breath of musk and straightened my lapels. The music was only a means to an end, after all.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man.

Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.

The first step to running a successful business, is printing out pictures of all the luxury items you’re going to buy once you get rich.

As your cash flow grows, you can indulge in some luxuries. An important distinction is that rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first. The poor and the middle class often buy luxury items like big houses, diamonds, furs, jewelry, or boats because they want to look rich. They look rich, but in reality they just get deeper in debt on credit. The old-money people, the long-term rich, build their asset column first. Then the income generated from the asset column buys their luxuries. The poor and middle class buy luxuries with their own sweat, blood, and children’s inheritance.

Naturally, such an implementation is not limited to exotic cars. In practice, it might include luxury goods (the tracking of blood diamonds is a commonly cited example) or the import and export of goods across international borders. Realistically, any item that changes custody at least once would be a candidate to benefit from this transparent surveillance and scrutiny.

That’s all right, pay no attention to me, just make yourself at home,” I tell the self-propelled whoopee cushion, then audit the itemized receipt with a sinking heart. Judging from the bottom line, cats fall somewhere between a new Porsche and a used Lamborghini in running costs, and I’ve got a nasty suspicion that I’m not going to be able to expense this claim. I mean, I might be able to concoct an experimental protocol that involves hosting one all-black specimen of Felis catus in the lap of luxury before sacrificing it on a summoning grid—but I suspect that would annoy Trish, and one should always avoid pissing off the departmental secretary.

At the time of our visit, European manufacturers doubted the robustness of the Indian car market, as well as the merits of being a minority partner in a government-managed company. Their fears were not without basis. Though the Indian economy had grown 7.2 per cent in 1980-81, it was not seen as a very vibrant economy. The demand for cars had been stagnant for a decade. Cars were highly taxed and were considered a luxury item. The economy was still closed and highly controlled and the business environment for foreigners was not friendly. If the number of cars produced was small, royalties would not yield much income. The stringent localization conditions would mean that profits from the sale of imported components would be low. The world car market was going through a downswing at that time and European car makers were battling stiff competition from Japanese cars on their home turf. Getting into an unfamiliar, and what appeared to be an unattractive market, was hardly a priority.

Emotion was a luxury item on the menu, and he couldn’t afford it.

Their primary customers are upper-income women between thirty and fifty years sold. The average markup on a handbag is ten to twelve times production cost. Perfume has, for more than seventy years, served as an introduction to a luxury brand. The message was clear: buy our brand and you too, will live a luxury life. The contradiction between personal indulgence and conspicuous consumption is the crux of the luxury business today: the convergence of its history with its current reality. Today, luxury brand items are collected like baseball cards, displayed like artwork, brandished like iconography. The tycoons have shifted the focus from what the product is to what is represents. Perfume has a mystical, magical quality. It catches your attention, enchants you. It complements and enhances your personality. it stirs emotion, within you and others around you. Perfume was a link between gods and mortals. It was a way to contact the gods, Hermes's Jean-Claude Ellena told me. Now it is a profane link: it's between you and me. Contentment is natural wealth. Luxury is artificial poverty. Socrates More than anything else today, the handbag tells the story of a woman: her reality, her dreams. Oscar Wilde said elegance is power. If it would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury. Cicero People don't believe there is a difference between real and fake anymore. Bernard Arnault's marketing plan had worked: consumers don't buy luxury branded items for what they are, but for what they represent. Luxury is the ease of a T-shirt in a very expensive dress. If you don't have it, you are not a person used to luxury. You are just a rich person who can buy staff. Karl Lagerfeld Luxury is exclusivity, it is made for you and no one else has it. At a minimum, it must be impeccable. Maximum, unique. If you do luxury, Louboutin explained, you have to treat people in a human way and you have to be elegant. You can't ask poor people in bad conditions to make beautiful things.

they also performed as centers of manufacturing, renowned for their shipbuilding, glassmaking, and the production of dyes and luxury items.

As your cash flow grows, you can indulge in some luxuries. An important distinction is that rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first. The poor and the middle class often buy luxury items like big houses, diamonds, furs, jewelry, or boats because they want to look rich. They look rich, but in reality they just get deeper in debt on credit. The old-money people, the long-term rich, build their asset column first. Then the income generated from the asset column buys their luxuries. The poor and middle class buy luxuries with their own sweat, blood, and children’s inheritance

By 1636, Amsterdam’s Jews, who numbered no more than 1 percent of the population, controlled 10 percent of the city’s trade and, dealing mostly in luxury items, accrued nearly 20 percent of the profits. Their

Don’t increase your lifestyle until your passive income surpasses your active income. You’ll know you can and should buy that luxury item when the cost of keeping it is totally covered by your passive income. The things you own (such as dividend-paying stocks, oil partnerships, and real estate investment trusts) should pay for the things you enjoy and consume.

This did not impede Francesco from buying extravagances to give our poor rooms some grandeur. Later, as a child, I saw these gaudy objects as elegant and extraordinary—the youthful imagination, like wine or opium, can dress up anything with “fabulous elegance” and “miraculous luxury.” I don’t know in which secondhand shop or garbage dump these items wound up, but they shine in my memory fully intact and in the same places where I, as a child, saw them every day.

Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was teh greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners - yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.

Luxury feeds ego and helps people to achieve a sense of social advancement. It may not be a psychologically healthy frame of mind, but most people attach self-worth to the ownership of exclusive items.

Among the papyri interpreted as fragments of books once used by teachers and students, the Psalter is better represented than any other volume of Jewish or Christian canonical Scripture, strongly suggesting that the Davidic Psalter was more used and read ‘than any book of the Old Testament, perhaps more than any book of the Bible, throughout the Christian centuries in Egypt’. A recent inventory of papyrus notebooks lists eleven items for the period between the third century and the seventh inclusive, of which eight give primarily or exclusively the texts of the psalms. Narrowing the period of the third century to the fifth gives seven papyrus items of which five contain copies of psalms. These notebooks are the best guide to what the literate slaves of larger households, grammar masters and attentive parents were teaching their infants in Egypt, both Jewish and Christian, and they suggest that the psalms were a fundamental teaching text in the social circles where men and women used writing, or aspired to it for their children. That is hardly surprising, since the psalms were ideal for teaching the young in households wealthy enough to afford the luxury of an education for an offspring. An almanac of prayer and counsel for times of good and adverse fortune, the poems of the Psalter are arranged in sense-units of moderate length by virtue of the poetic form. This makes them amenable to study, including the slow process of acquiring the skills of penmanship (Pl. 29).

Our culture reinforces accumulation, spending on luxury items and focusing too much time on material things instead of experiences and relationships.

Actually,” Matthew said mildly, “the available figures indicate that as soon as soap is mass-produced at an affordable price, the market will increase approximately ten percent a year. People of all classes want to be clean, Mr. Mardling. The problem is that good quality soap has always been a luxury item and therefore difficult to obtain.” “Mass production,” Mardling mulled aloud, his lean face furrowed with thought. “There is something objectionable about the phrase…it seems to be a way of enabling the lower classes to imitate their betters.” Matthew glanced at the circle of men, noting that the top of Bowman’s head was turning red—never a good sign—and that Westcliff was holding his silence, his black eyes unreadable. “That’s exactly what it is, Mr. Mardling,” Matthew said gravely. “Mass production of items such as clothing and soap will give the poor a chance to live with the same standards of health and dignity as the rest of us.” “But how will one sort out who is who?” Mardling protested. Matthew shot him a questioning glance. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Llandrindon joined in the discussion. “I believe what Mardling is asking,” he said, “is how one will be able to tell the difference between a shopgirl and a well-to-do woman if they are both clean and similarly dressed. And if a gentleman is not able to tell what they are by their appearance, how is he to know how to treat them?” Stunned by the snobbery of the question, Matthew considered his reply carefully. “I’ve always thought all women should be treated with respect no matter what their station.” “Well said,” Westcliff said gruffly, as Llandrindon opened his mouth to argue. No one wished to contradict the earl, but Mardling pressed, “Westcliff, do you see nothing harmful in encouraging the poor to rise above their stations? In allowing them to pretend there is no difference between them and ourselves?” “The only harm I see,” Westcliff said quietly, “is in discouraging people who want to better themselves, out of fear that we will lose our perceived superiority.

The Hen Going through the entire collection, I finally saw an egg that was simple in design and style, possessing clean lines that were modern and contemporary. I pointed out the "Hen" to mu'allmi, not expecting that he would ask the saleslady to release it from under the locked display case. As soon as the "Hen" was out of its display case I could see that it was even more beautiful and elegant than it first appeared. Ramiz held it in his hands, looking closely at this costly luxury item. “How much is it?" The signora looked at the price tag. "It is US $3,800.00." That was a lot of money in 1966. My professor held up the egg, examining its simple contents before replying, "Please wrap this for me. It is a gift for someone very dear to me.

Most privileged people have enough compassion to feel badly for people who don’t have money. But unfortunately, a not-insignificant percentage of advantaged people have a hard time understanding that shame is a luxury item, because there is a point at which things are so bad that you lose all sense of shame. Shameless

Luxury consumer items are typically differentiated from ordinary items through a significantly higher level of quality, price, rarity and aesthetic attributes. It is further augmented by intangible benefits and associations, although this is often based on perception.

Maybe even sadder is the willingness to give your whole life producing items of no social benefit, or even destructive, like slot machines, tawdry luxury goods or nuclear weapons. Is that what a man wants to do with his one single chance at life? Money is not just about paying bills, it must also be connected with making some contribution to life, others and history.

A luxury item is a thing you have that annoys other people that you have it.

A pool is a luxury item,” she argued. “In these extraordinary times, a bomb shelter is essential.

Soon after Tyson bought Washington Creamery in 1966, the company began catering to the perception that game hens were some kind of luxury item, calling them “Cornish game hens.” There was an exotic appeal to the product, the air of nobility to it, as if it were the kind of dish that was served by butlers after a fox hunt. Haskell Jackson marveled at the gimmickry of it. All of Tyson’s chickens were Cornish birds, as Jackson and others in the industry knew. The Cornish breed had been selected as the industry standard because it grew fast. The only difference between a Cornish game hen and an ice-packed chicken was that you killed the game hen when it was younger. It was just a smaller chicken, wrapped in plastic and frozen, given a better name and sold at a fixed price. But the strategy worked.

a majority of states still have a sales tax on period products because they are considered luxury items. Meanwhile, products such as Rogaine and Viagra are not.

Black Americans at the top of the scale, with incomes of more than $100,000 a year, were most likely to cling to the more traditional view that “blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.” Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item. As

There was also a series of top contributor lists, for the previous forty-eight hours as well as for all time, to motivate both short-term and long-term participation. And to celebrate successful participation, as well as sheer volume of participation, there was also a “best individual discoveries” page that identified key findings from individual players. Some of these discoveries were over-the-top luxuries offensive to one’s sense of propriety: a £240 giraffe print or a £225 fountain pen, for example. Others were mathematical errors or inconsistencies suggesting individuals were reimbursed more than they were owed. As one player noted, “Bad math on page 29 of an invoice from MP Denis MacShane, who claimed £1,730 worth of reimbursement, when the sum of those items listed was only £1,480.

He had been thinking, in that moment, about success, and about the fact that the book he had written in the filthy and oppressive basement studio that used to be his workplace had through its worldwide sales transported him here, to this large and pleasant room in the pleasant home he now owned with a view of his beautiful gardens. He had also bought several new items of furniture with his money, including the Mies van der Rohe chair in which he had at that moment been sitting. He could feel the soft leather beneath his thighs; his nostrils were full of its rich, luxurious smell. These sensations were still quite alien to him, yet he was aware that they were causing a new part of him, a new self, to grow. He had no associations with them but those associations were being created right now, while he sat there: he was actively and by small degrees becoming distanced from the person he had been, while becoming by the same small degrees someone new.

In exchange for hard work the [Cuban] people have freedom. Not only freedom from want but freedom to develop themselves as individuals. They have shelter, no mortgages, sufficient food for survival and sufficient clothing. There are few cars, as this is really a luxury item, and what cars there are, are for the use of the people. There are many buses. These buses are all made in France or England. In Havana, transportation is only 5 cents. If you have it, you pay it consciously, if not you can ride anyway. I used to watch the people get on and everyone seemed to pay. Public telephones are free. Medical care is completely free to everyone. Even sports events are free. (1969)

With wealth now more evenly distributed through society, demand for luxury goods—imported or otherwise—soared as a result of more consumers being able to purchase items that had previously been unaffordable.69 Spending patterns were affected by other demographic changes that the plague had produced, notably the shift in favour of the working young, who were best placed to take advantage of new opportunities opening up before them. Already less disposed to saving because of their close shave with death, the new up-and-coming generation, better paid than their parents and with better prospects for the future, set about spending their wealth on things they were interested in

no more than 1 percent of the population, controlled 10 percent of the city’s trade and, dealing mostly in luxury items, accrued nearly 20 percent of the profits.

And, switching from the personal to the corporate, “large,” “larger,” and preferably “the largest” have become the most desirable adjectives to describe trajectories to success. Some providers of limited-edition luxury items aside, no company has become a global leader by drastically capping its output and aspiring to remain modest in size.35 And there is nothing new about this trend toward larger sizes: the evolution of living organisms has supplied many precedents. What’s new is the ubiquity and the pace of the modern quest for larger sizes. This accelerated trend began during the latter half of the 19th century, powered by industrialization, and its intensification through the 20th century created our modern world of record-breaking sizes and superlatives.

As retail consultant and author Michael Silverstein explains, these consumers are happy to pay for upscale items that “make their hearts pound” and for which they don’t have to pay full price. Then they trade down to cheaper private labels for things like paper towels, detergent, vitamins, and other household staples. “It’s the ultimate concept in trading up and trading down,” says Silverstein. “It’s a brilliant innovation for the new luxury.

We began with two buttery sweet edamame and one sugar syrup-soaked shrimp in a crunchy soft shell. A lightly simmered baby octopus practically melted in our mouths, while a tiny cup of clear, lemony soup provided cooling refreshment. The soup held three slices of okra and several slippery cool strands of junsai (water shield), a luxury food that grows in ponds and marshes throughout Asia, Australia, West Africa, and North America. In the late spring the tiny plant develops leafy shoots surrounded by a gelatinous sheath that floats on the water's surface, enabling the Japanese to scoop it up by hand from small boats. The edamame, okra, and water shield represented items from the mountains, while the shrimp and octopus exemplified the ocean. I could tell John was intrigued and amused by this artistic (perhaps puny?) array of exotica. Two pearly pieces of sea bream, several fat triangles of tuna, and sweet shelled raw baby shrimp composed the sashimi course, which arrived on a pale turquoise dish about the size of a bread plate. It was the raw fish portion of the meal, similar to the mukozuke in a tea kaiseki. To counter the beefy richness of the tuna, we wrapped the triangles in pungent shiso leaves , then dunked them in soy. After the sashimi, the waitress brought out the mushimono (steamed dish). In a coal-black ceramic bowl sat an ivory potato dumpling suspended in a clear wiggly broth of dashi thickened with kudzu starch, freckled with glistening orange salmon roe. The steamed dumplings, reminiscent of a white peach, was all at once velvety, sweet, starchy, and feathery and had a center "pit" of ground chicken. The whole dish, served warm and with a little wooden spoon, embodied the young, tender softness of spring.

Between the Stamp Act of 1765 and Lexington a decade later, one of the colonists’ most widespread tools of resistance against arbitrary taxation without representation was boycotting British imports, particularly luxury items. While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it’s worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped basil leaves in boiling water to make the same point. What’s more valiant: littering from a wharf or years of doing chores and looking after

They all espoused a return to preindustrial fabrication methods and a commitment to bringing good design to the masses. Yet they wound up producing objects—even those not made from intrinsically precious materials—that were so labor-intensive that they could never compete with machine-made items that the working class could afford, and thus became luxury goods for the rich.

Black Americans at the top of the scale, with incomes of more than $100,000 a year, were most likely to cling to the more traditional view that “blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.” Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item.

Hornblower sat in his private sitting-room in the Golden Cross inn. There was a fire burning, and on the table at which he sat there were no fewer than four wax candles lighted. All this luxury — the private sitting-room, the fire, the wax candles — gave Hornblower uneasy delight. He had been poor for so long, he had had to scrape and economize so carefully all his life, that recklessness with money gave him this queer dubious pleasure, this guilty joy. His bill tomorrow would contain an item of at least half a crown for light, and if he had been content with rush dips the charge would not have been more than twopence. The fire would be a shilling, too. And you could trust an innkeeper to make the maximum charges to a guest who obviously could afford them, a Knight of the Bath, with a servant, and a two-horse chariot. Tomorrow’s bill would be nearer two guineas than one, Hornblower touched his breast pocket to reassure himself that his thick wad of one-pound notes was still there. He could afford to spend

The new GST: A halfway house In spite of all the favourable features of the GST, it introduces the anomaly of having an origin-based tax on interstate trade he proposed GST would be a single levy. 1141 words From a roadblock during the UPA regime, the incessant efforts of the BJP government have finally paved way for the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). This would, no doubt, be a major reform in the existing indirect tax system of the country. With a view to introducing the GST, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has introduced the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill 2014 in Parliament. The new tax would be implemented from April 1, 2016. Both the government and the taxpayers will have enough time to understand the implications of the new tax and its administrative nuances. Unlike the 119th Amendment Bill, which lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha, the new Bill will hopefully see the light of the day as it takes into account the objections of the state governments regarding buoyancy of the tax and the autonomy of the states. It proposes setting up of the GST Council, which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the states. This council would function under the chairmanship of the Union finance minister with all the state finance ministers as its members. It will make recommendations to the Union and the states on the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the states and the local bodies, which may be subsumed in the GST; the rates including floor rates with bands of goods and services tax; any special rate or rates for a specified period to raise additional resources during any natural calamity or disaster etc. However, all the recommendations will have to be supported by not less than three-fourth of the weighted votes—the Centre having one-third votes and the states having two-third votes. Thus, no change can be implemented without the consent of both the Centre and the states. The proposed GST would be a single levy. It would aim at creating an integrated national market for goods and services by replacing the plethora of indirect taxes levied by the Centre and the states. While central taxes to be subsumed include central excise duty (CenVAT), additional excise duties, service tax, additional customs duty (CVD) and special additional duty of customs (SAD), the state taxes that fall in this category include VAT/sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax and luxury tax. Therefore, all taxes on goods and services, except alcoholic liquor for human consumption, will be brought under the purview of the GST. Irrespective of whether we currently levy GST on these items or not, it is important to bring these items under the Constitution Amendment Bill because the exclusion of these items from the GST does not provide any flexibility to levy GST on these items in the future. Any change in the future would then require another Constitutional Amendment. From a futuristic approach, it is prudent not to confine the scope of the tax under the bindings of the Constitution. The Constitution should demarcate the broad areas of taxing powers as has been the case with sales tax and Union excise duty in the past. Currently, the rationale of exclusion of these commodities from the purview of the GST is solely based on revenue considerations. No other considerations of tax policy or tax administration have gone into excluding petroleum products from the purview of the GST. However, the long-term perspective of a rational tax policy for the GST shows that, at present, these taxes constitute more than half of the retail prices of motor fuel. In a scenario where motor fuel prices are deregulated, the taxation policy would have to be flexible and linked to the global crude oil prices to ensure that prices are held stable and less pressure exerted on the economy during the increasing price trends. The trend of taxation of motor fuel all over the world suggests that these items

But what if she acted like a credit card company? What if she stopped calling when the bill was due? What if, in very fine print in her very long contract, she said she would bill them $750 for every day that they were past due and after 15 days she would automatically charge their credit card on file? Only she didn’t write out the $750. Instead, she calculated it down to a percentage of their total fee, which seemed such a minuscule amount. Less than 1 percent, really. So that even when people did bother to read the clause, they usually shrugged, the amount seeming so nominal. She thought the idea so bold when she implemented it, she was certain she would lose clients or have wild fights about it when her invoices went out. Instead, she discovered something else about the ultra-rich. The only thing they enjoyed less than parting with their money was talking about it. It seemed to physically pain them. She had one person ask what the fee was and as soon as she explained that they could refer to item 26a in their contract they apologized, said they would FedEx a check, and hung up the phone. The Eikenborns were particularly reticent to talk about bills or budgets or anything of that sort, yet maniacally uninclined to spend a penny, Olga noticed, on other human beings. Mrs. Eikenborn delightfully coughed up cash for luxury bathroom trailers, fine wine, freshly shucked oysters, Kobe beef steaks, and custom tuxedos for Victoria’s two dogs. Yet, she balked at the cost of feeding the staff who installed the tents and lighting, proclaimed outrage at the photographer’s need for breaks, and once booked Olga on a double layover to save $200 on a $750,000 event.

Our garage was full of luxury vehicles in addition to the reindeer my husband was known for traveling and delivering items in.

Imagine homemade desserts, with pies being the star, made by two older Southern women using time-honored family recipes that elicit a feeling of nostalgia and luxury." Brock snorted as he shook his head. "Food is a crowded field. There's no way---" Micah held up a hand. "Let her finish." Yeah, dumbass. Let me finish. "This is about more than pies and desserts. It's about the story behind the desserts." I was in it now and didn't have a road map to lead me out again. "The backstory is inspiring. Two women of a certain age were married to completely useless men and ultimately forced to fend for themselves." I let that last sentence splash around in the room's testosterone for a second. "They rebuilt their lives by making and selling pies. Creating a business and a community around the pies that later expanded to include other desserts." "So?" Brock excelled at missing the point and didn't disappoint here. "Frankly, they're damn good pies. Right now, they're sold on a small scale all over the South via word of mouth and a website. They're special. Curated. Artisanal." I'd moved into the part of the pitch where I threw phrases together that may or may not have applied to pies, cupcakes, and other assorted dessert items because this room loved fancy buzzwords. "Now imagine taking this small grandma-run business nationwide. Making it the go-to dessert option for special occasions. Putting it in high-end grocery and specialty stores as well as on direct delivery. Creating demand like that lady did with cupcakes a decade or so ago." Big fan. Loved the whole dessert family. And those cupcake vending machines? Genius. Now I wanted a cupcake, so time to wrap this up. "If we focus on the pies for a second, once you convince people they need the pies, they'll pay for anything for those pies. Plus, you have built-in marketing gold in the form of two very feisty, self-made women who people will see as their grandmas.

Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn’t there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.