Living Standards: Luxury Consumption

Abstract

Even today’s poor American has easy access to amenities (personal transportation, personal entertainment, temperature control, plumbing, health and beauty aids, synthetic fabrics, and so forth.) outside the reach of the wealthiest individuals of past centuries.¹ After studying sixteenth-seventeenth-century-C.E. family-budget data, the economic historian Cipolla (1976, p. 38) concludes that “even when it had overtones of extravagance” the consumption of the rich “never showed much variety. The … state of the arts did not offer the consumer the great variety of products and services which characterize industrial societies.” But early modern consumption outlets were certainly more varied than those available for the surplus wealth of the genuinely affluent citizen of ancient society. The rich Egyptian or Babylonian or Roman or Israelite finding that climate reduced his basic needs for clothing and shelter, and being necessarily “poor” in terms of modern amenities, chose his bundle of luxuries accordingly. He enjoyed his many children and participated in great feasts; he built winter and summer homes; he made lavish provisions for his afterlife and gave lavish public donations; he maintained a large personal retinue; he enjoyed song, art, and drama; he concerned himself with wisdom, with questions of human character and duty; and he sought to improve the position of those less fortunate than himself.