Nouveau Riche Quotes

They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as it they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills.

No one, especially the nouveau riche, turned down the interest of a Knickerbocker, a group of old money New Yorkers with cache, if not cash.

Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority - an apotheosis of the subject that is also its disappearance. Poor little rich man: he is 'precluded from all fuure living and striving, developing and desiring' in the neo-Art Nouveau world of total design and Internet plenitude.

I felt it now, reading Ma’s email, wondering how someone who shared my blood could turn into a coxswain, Vineyard Vines-wearing, Niçois salad-ordering, country club-attending, nouveau riche douchebag, who surrounded himself with people named Brock, Chett, and Tripp with two Ps.

Domenico had that ‘look-at-me I’ve-got-money’ attitude about him. A proper nouveau riche. In combination with his pig-like table manners at home, it was a sight to behold.

Bila para nouveau riche seperti nahkoda-nahkoda perdagangan dan baron-baron industri memilih Sunda Kelapa atau Temasek, maka Semarang adalah pilihan mereka yang berdarah biru.

We must stop calling our drug barons and “419s” (fraudsters) nouveau riche, big shots or those who have made it.

The nouveau riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays. Minor officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well educated often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response.

How thoroughly the chimps and bonobos have erased the list of purported human distinctions!-self-awareness, language, ideas and their association, reason, trade, play, choice, courage, love and altruism, laughter, concealed ovulation, kissing, face-to-face sex, female orgasm, division of labor, cannibalism, art, music, politics, and featherless bipedalism, besides tool using, tool making, and much else. Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the apes casually knock them down--toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings of Earth. Instead, we are more like the nouveau riche, incompletely accommodated to our recent exalted state, insecure about who we are, and trying to put as much distance as possible between us and our humble origins. It's as if our nearest relatives, by their very existence, refute all our explanations and justifications. So as counterweights to human arrogance and pride, it is good for us that there are still apes on Earth.

It's the ugly extravaganza of what New York, and too many other cities, have become---playgrounds for the ultra nouveau riche, orchestrated by oligarchs in sky-high towers, the streets stripped of its character, whitewashed and varnished until they look like Anywhere, USA.

Codfish aristocracy' is what they call us. Men who've made a fortune in business, but are common-born." "Why codfish?" "It used to refer to the rich merchants who settled the American colonies and made their money in the cod trade. Now it means any successful businessman." "Nouveau riche is another term," Helen added. "It's never used as a compliment, of course. But it should be. Being self-made is something to be admired." As she felt his soundless chuckle, she insisted, "It is." Rhys turned his head to kiss her. "You've no need to flatter my vanity." "I'm not flattering you. I think you're remarkable.

When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you’ve got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon when necessary. That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt – unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey. Fortunately for us we have just the man.

There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women.

It's a rented house right along the Mississippi River, a house that screams Suburban Nouveau Riche, the kind of place I aspired to as a kid from my split-level, shag-carpet side of town. The kind of house that is immediately familiar: a generically grand, unchallenging, new, new, new house that my wife would-and did-detest. 'Should I remove my soul before I come inside?' Her first line upon arrival.

The internet, although beloved by all including Al Qaeda, went straight from barbarism to decadence without ever encountering a civilisation. It was never utopian, although it was free. Its lawyers are patent trolls. Its political parties are flash mobs in the streets. Its wealthy are nouveau-rich cranks. Its poor are a tidal wave of Third World young people. The Twenty-Teens are quite an interesting cultural period.

What reader or dreamer doesn’t imagine the romantic life of a writer, who lingers between the desk and the fridge in the morning and in the evening attends cocktail parties thrown by nouveaux riches and the society ladies who hardly ever have the time to read?

Leaving off her rock kicking, Daisy regarded Lillian with a frown. “I’ve been wondering…why are we so determined to marry into the peerage, and live in a huge crumbly old house and eat slimy English food, and try to give instructions to a bunch of servants who have absolutely no respect for us?” “Because it’s what Mother wants,” Lillian replied dryly. “And because no one in New York will have either of us.” It was an unfortunate fact that in the highly striated New York society, men with newly earned fortunes found it quite easy to marry well. But heiresses with common bloodlines were desired neither by the established blue bloods nor by the nouveau riche men who wanted to better themselves socially. Therefore, husband hunting in Europe, where upper-class men needed rich wives, was the only solution. Daisy’s frown twisted into an ironic grin. “What if no one will have us here either?” “Then we’ll become a pair of wicked old spinsters, romping back and forth across Europe.

Because of industrialization, and the green revolution in the rural areas, a new class of nouveau-riche persons are emerging, and these people are being exposed for the first time to university education, comfortable urban life, stylish living, and western influences – materialistic comforts. During this transition period, we are slowly cutting from the moral ethos of our grandfathers, and at the same time we don’t have the westerner’s idea of discipline and social justice. At the moment things are chaotic here.

Unscrupulous vendors turn the situation to their advantage. In China, nouveau-riche status-seekers are spending small fortunes on counterfeit Bordeaux. A related scenario exists here vis-à-vis olive oil. “The United States is a dumping ground for bad olive oil,” Langstaff told me. It’s no secret among European manufacturers that Americans have no palate for olive oils. The Olive Center—a recent addition to the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, on the campus of the University of California at Davis—aims to change that.

Ohio hadn’t gone through the same real estate boom as the Sun Belt, but the vultures had circled the carcasses of dying industrial towns––Dayton, Toledo, Mansfield, Youngstown, Akron––peddling home equity loans and refinancing. All the garbage that blew up in people’s faces the same way subprime mortgages had. A fleet of nouveau riche snake oil salesmen scoured the state, moving from minority hoods where widowed, churchgoing black ladies on fixed incomes made for easy marks to the white working-class enclaves and then the first-ring suburbs. The foreclosures began to crop up and then turn into fields of fast-moving weeds, reducing whole neighborhoods to abandoned husks or drug pens. Ameriquest, Countrywide, CitiFinancial––all those devious motherfuckers watching the state’s job losses, plant closings, its struggles, its heartache, and figuring out a way to make a buck on people’s desperation. Every city or town in the state had big gangrenous swaths that looked like New Canaan, the same cancer-patient-looking strip mall geography with brightly lit outposts hawking variations on usurious consumer credit. Those entrepreneurs saw the state breaking down like Bill’s truck, and they moved in, looking to sell the last working parts for scrap.

1860 there had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever knew. A hundred and fifty barons commanded the labor of nearly six thousand Negroes, held sway over farms with ninety thousand acres tilled land, valued even in times of cheap soil at three millions of dollars. Twenty thousand bales of ginned cotton went yearly to England, New and Old; and men that came there bankrupt made money and grew rich. In a single decade the cotton output increased four-fold and the value of lands was tripled. It was the heyday of the nouveau riche, and a life of careless extravagance among the masters. Four and six bobtailed thoroughbreds rolled their coaches to town; open hospitality and gay entertainment were the rule. Parks and groves were laid out, rich with flower and vine, and in the midst stood the low wide-halled “big house,” with its porch and columns and great fireplaces. And yet with all this there was something sordid, something forced,—a certain feverish unrest and recklessness; for was not all this show and tinsel built upon a groan? “This land was a little Hell,” said a ragged, brown, and grave-faced man to me. We were seated near a roadside blacksmith shop, and behind was the bare ruin of some master’s home. “I’ve seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they were kicked aside, and the plough never

...Paul Dermée. In the inaugural issue of L’Esprit Nouveau in October 1920, Dermée published “Découverte du lyrisme” (Discovery of lyricism), a piece connecting lyricism, automatism, dream, Freud, cinema, and surrealism:  "This background activity that became autonomous and functions blindly without the use of conscious will, this is what we call “automatism” [automatisme]. "We dream, kaleidoscope of images, sensations and emotions function. The film unfolds, varied and captivating [captivant] and the whole richness of inner life traverses consciousness as a broad current: our soul fills up with a spontaneous melody, it is the lyrical flux that sings! "As for images, they must be handled with great care, by preventing them from giving objects an existence in the exterior world. For nothing must make the reader come out of his deep self. Thus no images realizable through plastic means: only their surrealism [surréalisme].

In the nouveau roman of Robbe-Grillet there is an attempt at a more or less Copernican change in the relation between the paradigm and the text. In Camus the counter-pointing is less doctrinaire; in Dostoevsky there is no evidence of any theoretical stand at all, simply rich originality within or without, as it chances, normal expectations. All these are novels which most of us would agree (and it is by a consensus of this kind only that these matters, quite rightly, are determined) to be at least very good. They represent in varying degrees that falsification of simple expectations as to the structure of a future which constitutes peripeteia. We cannot, of course, be denied an end; it is one of the great charms of books that they have to end. But unless we are extremely naive, as some apocalyptic sects still are, we do not ask that they progress towards that end precisely as we have been given to believe. In fact we should expect only the most trivial work to conform to pre-existent types. It is essential to the drift of all these talks that what I call the scepticism of the clerisy operates in the person of the reader as a demand for constantly changing, constantly more subtle, relationships between a fiction and the paradigms, and that this expectation enables a writer much inventive scope as he works to meet and transcend it. The presence of such paradigms in fictions may be necessary-that is a point I shall be discussing later--but if the fictions satisfy the clerisy, the paradigms will be to a varying but always great extent attenuated or obscured. The pressure of reality on us is always varying, as Stevens might have said: the fictions must change, or if they are fixed, the interpretations must change. Since we continue to 'prescribe laws to nature'--Kant's phrase, and we do--we shall continue to have a relation with the paradigms, but we shall change them to make them go on working. If we cannot break free of them, we must make sense of them.

Some words that sound English actually have Italian roots. “Snob” may date back to Renaissance Florence, when the burgeoning middle class sought acceptance in the upper strata of local society. To distinguish between the true noble families and the nouveau riche, census-takers wrote s.nob (senza nobiltà, for “without nobility”) next to the names of social climbers (known in contemporary Italian as arrampicatori sociali). Seemingly all-American “jeans” started off as blu di Genova for the color of the denim used by its sailors on their boats. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term migrated into French as bleu de Genes before its global reincarnation as jeans.

It started off very underprivileged, but got more affluent.' Amis suddenly smiles to himself, remembering a moment with his father. 'I remember saying – I'm very interested in class, generally – when I was going to this grammar full of Old Etonians – I remember asking my father if we were nouveau riche, and he replied: 'Well, we're very nouveau, but not very riche.' Which is about the size of it.

The chef at Blenheim, whenever he wanted to show his displeasure with Consuelo, would serve ortolans to her guests for breakfast because he knew she considered this mortifyingly nouveau riche.

En obligeant les communes à se charger des enfants naturels et en leur permettant de rechercher la paternité, afin d'alléger ce poids accablant, nous avons facilité autant qu'il était en nous l'inconduite des femmes de basses classes. La grossesse illégitime doit presque toujours améliorer leur situation matérielle. Si le père de l'engant est riche, elles peuvent se décharger sur lui du soin d'élever le fruit de leurs communes erreurs; s'il est pauvre, elles confient ce soin à la société: les secours qu'on leur accorde de part ou d'autre dépassent presque toujours les dépenses du nouveau-né. Elles s'enrichissent donc par leurs vices mêmes, et il arrive souvent que la fille qui a été plusieurs fois mère fait un mariage plus avantageux que la jeune vierge qui n'a que ses vertus à offrir. La première a trouvé une sorte de dot dans son infamie.

Floridians have accustomed themselves to this nasty vermin [the cockroach] as just another of the Sunshine State's rogue inhabitants, not so different from its serial killers, native shit-kickers, oblivious tourists, faux-mermaids, cocaine kingpins, moron surfers, nouveau-riche snowbirds, spooky clairvoyants and Jimmy Buffet wanna-be's.

nouveau riche,

Blue Valley West, a high school in the nouveau riche south Kansas City suburbs.

I knew that it was time to cease being a Romanov so as to become an Abramovich.

Myron’s car climbed up past the nouveau riche mansions, so expansive they appeared to have been taking some sort of growth hormone.

Chinese clients used to talk only about prices and vintages, not what was in the bottle. Now the important thing is not how much money you have but how you express it in wine knowledge.” Tim Weiland, former general manager of the exclusive Aman at Summer Palace in the emperor’s onetime retreat in Beijing, suggests that the image of China’s wealthy class as crass nouveau riche—mixing expensive Bordeaux with Coca-Cola, for example—is entirely out of date. “The nouveaux riches of ten years ago are now the old rich,” he says. “They have homes in Switzerland and Aspen, they’re incredibly sophisticated and well traveled—much more well traveled than I am—and they know their wines.

He smiled and left me to my misgivings about Paris Denard. The man had received too many accolades for too little suffering and now wore them like medals of valor everywhere he went. A little more notoriety and his ego would bring him one short step away from the ugly little snare that waits and watches for those too fond of themselves. It is the same nasty little trap that lures the nouveau rich or puerile famous. As fame and notoriety take hold, suddenly you are surrounded with an ample variety of overindulgences available to you most any time. Innocently you begin sampling the ones that do not offend your morals or ethics while secretly eyeing those that do. After a while, the lines become blurred and they all become indulgences that you rightly deserve, a normal part of the avant-garde life style you lead. The compromises become greater and greater until you are so possessed by overindulgence that you are a person owned by indiscretions, and those who provide them. That is the trap. You lose your self, one sin at a time, until those who specialize in sin can make you serve them and do most anything they require you to do to further their own aims. It is at that point many wealthy or famous individuals decide there is no going back, though they are unwilling to continue. They help fill the news and star magazines with the regretful obituaries of people who gave so much, and who were so dearly loved it seemed unthinkable that they took their own lives. They will always be remembered. There will always be gratitude.

Épicure l’avait ouvert à tous, même aux femmes, même aux hétaïres (prostituées), même aux esclaves. Ce sens de l’universalité humaine est tout à fait nouveau et révolutionnaire : Platon et Aristote ne s’adressaient qu’aux jeunes gens libres, de riche famille.

The nouveau riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays. Minor officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well educated often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against their character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response.

Luke snorted with derision. ‘What it comes down to is, they’re just a bunch of horny, fucked up, nouveau riche types. Aside from the fact that we fuck ourselves up on stout instead, there’s no big difference between us and them.

Еще бы: Россия неизменно присутствует в сводках новостей. «Культ России вытеснил в Англии культ негров» — гласил один из заголовков. Пока А. перечислял их, отметая все остальное, что было в истории, я все больше убеждалась в том, что Советское государство кровно связано с ранним (да и современным) христианством. Оба разделяют ту же nouveau riche идею, что до появления их символа веры — Ленина или Иисуса — в мире царил хаос. Оба провозглашают труд единственной добродетелью и обожествляют труженика. Оба практикуют культ Марии — рожай, рожай, рожай! А воздаяние? Новое рождение. Помните прошлогодний папский эдикт? Его суть: «Богатые, будьте щедрыми. Бедные, будьте терпеливыми, и вам воздастся». Разве последнее утверждение этого гуманного (sic) призыва не сродни советскому плакату? Какие еще награды? Для бедных христиан — рай в будущем, для бедных большевиков — будущее супергосударство. Мир полон воздаяний, но поколения умирают, так и не изведав их. Ленин первый, кто пообещал рай здесь и сейчас, но и сам не дожил до этого. А., которому время от времени поддакивала жена, все выше и выше взлетал по лестнице риторики. У меня возникло ощущение, что эти двое, как и все русские, которых я встречала, заняты надуванием огромного мыльного пузыря своей веры — не сознавая, что он неизбежно лопнет, они мчатся во весь опор к распаду, хаосу и торжеству реальности. Ну вот, началось единение. Унылость, всеобщая серость, совершенная одинаковость людей проникают и в нас. Мы заражаемся привычкой, которую замечаем в каждом встреченном нами русском: жить вполсилы, сберегая драгоценную энергию, и учимся терпеть, терпеть, терпеть. Нас засасывает машина, мы словно попали в зубцы гигантской шестеренки: с кошмарной регулярностью разъезжаем из крепости во дворец, из дворца на фабрику. Огромные человеческие часы мерно отсчитывают время, но, похоже, никому неизвестно, верно ли они идут. Этот Дом культуры почти ничем не отличается от западных политехнических школ, но поскольку мы оказались в России, то увиденное не могло не потрясти нас до глубины души. Конечно, там была и комната для антирелигиозной пропаганды, где нам втолковали, что Зевс обратился в дым, а крест – в прах, это произвело на всех неизгладимое впечатление. Раздел галереи, посвященный нравам буржуазии, тоже хорош: все эти молоденькие девушки, которых бездушные родители приносят в жертву распутным старикам. Пожалуй, я опоздала с визитом в Россию. Мне бы появиться здесь в восемнадцатом веке: тогда, если судить по этим живописным свидетельствам, жизнь была куда более увлекательной. Сегодня гид рассказала мне, как одна туристка в конце поездки захотела подарить ей пару теплых чулок. «Представляете! Какое оскорбление!» При этом девушка была так скудно и не по погоде одета! Но эти люди готовы терпеть всё. Уж не гордыня ли это? Какая разница! Мне эта девушка понравилась. Пусть она и путается в исторических фактах — зато как она нас ненавидит! И поделом Рационализация, доведенная до своего логического завершения, может означать только смерть. Разложив что-то на составные части, мы не поймем целого; расчлененное тело не объяснит нам, как в него вдохнули жизнь. Это поразительно красивый город! Светлые изысканные дома и дворцы растут словно цветы на широких грядках улиц — по крайней мере, так чудится поначалу. Морозно-синяя, огненно-синяя Нева кажется тверже, чем воздушные мосты над ней.

So when Morgan returned from Maracaibo on May 16, 1669, some things were the same as always: A significant percentage of the town’s populace was going wild at the dockside, their shouts interrupted by the throaty salutes of cannon. The tavern owners were pulling the barrels of Madeira from their basements and buying every drop of rum they could get their hands on; the whores’ prices were rising by the minute, as 450 nouveau riche buccaneers would soon need servicing; the merchants readied their scales for the gobs of melted silver the pirates would soon be bringing in and slamming down on their counters with their filthy hands. In short, Port Royal was humming. But there was one face that was missing in the revelry: Modyford’s.

C'est ça, le progrès économique. Plus nos fermes et nos usines améliorent leur rendement, plus leur part dans notre économie diminue. Et plus les secteurs de l'agriculture et des biens manufacturés sont productifs, moins ils font travailler les gens. Dans le même temps, ce transfert génère plus d'emplois dans le secteur des services. Mais pour pouvoir dénicher un job dans ce nouveau monde de consultants, de comptables, de programmeurs, de conseillers, de courtiers et d'avocats, il faut des références. C'est cette évolution qui a créé une immense richesse. Ironiquement, pourtant, elle a aussi donné naissance à un système où de plus en plus de gens peuvent gagner de l'argent sans contribuer à rien qui ait une valeur tangible pour la société. On peut appeler ça le paradoxe du progrès: ici, en pays d'abondance, plus nous devenons riches et intelligents, plus on peut se passer de nous.

What the culture of get rich quick does to our people is People begin to think that there is no natural process to success, hence the fraudulent nouveau riche (swindlers, drug pushers, 419 scammers etc.) begin to become respected in the society

J'ai des amis qui sont parents et qui ne se sentent pas obligés pour autant d'avoir chacun une grosse job steady ou de prendre le plus de contrats possible pour en piler pendant que c'est le temps. Certains sont travailleurs autonomes, d'autres travaillent à salaire pendant que leur conjoint s'occupe des enfants. Je connais des mères et des pères au foyer nouveau genre et des couples qui travaillent à temps partiel. Certains sont pas mal écolos sur les bords, c'est sûr, d'autres un peu hippies, altermondialistes ou végétaliens. D'autres non. Plusieurs ont juste un sens commun un peu différent du gros bon sens qui s'énonce aujourd'hui sur toutes les tribunes. Leurs enfants sont bien--je ne veux pas dire parfaits, je veux dire aussi bien que les autres. Pas moins heureux, pas moins équilibrés, pas moins beaux. Des petits hipsters de friperie qui passent beaucoup de temps avec leur père et leur mère. Ils ont tout ce dont ils ont besoin, même s'ils se passent de certaines choses. Et la plupart des affaires dont ils se privent n'ont pas l'air de leur manquer tant que ça. Ces gens-là font des choix de vie dont le motif premier n'est pas l'argent, et ils s'arrangent. Ils ne sont ni riches, ni pauvres, mais ils ne se réclament pas de la classe moyenne. Ils ne se reconnaissent pas en elle et elle ne se reconnaitrait pas en eux. Ils dépensent moins qu'elle, consomment moins qu'elle et polluent moins qu'elle aussi. Certains vivent même en partie de ce qu'elle jette. Ils ont moins à perdre qu'elle, aussi, et moins peur des tempêtes qui s'annoncent. Ils ne portent pas encore de nom et pourtant ils existent. Et c'est eux le sel de la terre, désormais.

In truth, Belmont’s Jockey Club, the organization that controlled Thoroughbred racing in America, was founded by a mix of people. Some were blue-blooded Americans who traced their ancestry to Mayflower voyagers and Puritan founding fathers, and others were nouveau riche industrialists who wished to ally themselves—through marriages to aristocrats, membership in the Episcopal Church, and associations with the elite sport of horse racing—to the American upper crust. At

A different serving boy came out with a basket of steaming hot bread and, in the Gaulic fashion, little tubs of sweet butter. Eric preferred olive oil, but along with all the other terrible things going on in the castle, Vanessa had embraced Gaulic culture with the tacky enthusiasm of a true nouveau riche. "I do so love baguettes, my dear, sweet, Mad Prince. Don't you?" she said with a sigh, picking up a piece and buttering it carefully. "You know, we don't have them where I come from." "Really? Where you come from? What country on Earth doesn't have some form of bread? Tell me. Please, I'd like to know." "Well, we don't have a grand tradition of baking, in general," she said, opening her mouth wider and wider. Then, all the while looking directly at Eric, she carefully pushed the entire slice in. She chewed, forcefully, largely, and expressively. He could see whole lumps of bread being pushed around her mouth and up against her cheeks. The prince threw his own baguette back down on the plate in disgust. She grinned, mouth still working. "Your appetite is healthy, despite your cold," he growled. "Healthy for a longshoreman. Where do you put it all? You never- seem- to- gain- a -pound." "Running the castle keeps one trim," she answered modestly.

She wore almost no jewelry, which Rosa later learned was characteristic of women from the oldest and wealthiest families. Ostentation was for the nouveau riche.

the boom-and-bust nature of Venezuela’s economy has taught most people that producing is too much of a headache—importing goods is an easier business. Or as Vollmer puts it: “We’re a nouveau riche country that never really had to work for what it has.

Lawns were invented in the late Middle Ages by nobles who wanted to flaunt their wealth. Lawns are pure luxury. The bigger your lawn, the more land and peasants you needed to cultivate it. Lawns became a primary symbol of political power, so much so that upwardly mobile merchants and other nouveau riche couldn’t wait to grow their own.