The strong demand for luxury goods and services in the U.S. during the past two to three years has largely come to an end as conspicuous consumption seems to be out of favor with affluent households, ...

David Graeber’s new book Bullshit Jobs strongly recalls Thorstein Veblen’s classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the latter book, the concept of conspicuous consumption was first brought out ...

Your support goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership or give a one-time contribution, we’ll give a membership to someone who can’t afford access. It’s a simple way for you ...

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the economy was producing roughly $10 trillion worth of output annually. This year, it looks like production will be in the neighborhood of $13.5 ...

How much is digital privacy worth to you? I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that if you had to put a price tag on your privacy—as in, how many actual dollars you’d be willing to part with in order ...

It’s back-to-school time and another shopping holiday is upon us. It may not be a coincidence, but Aug. 1 was this year’s Earth Overshoot Day — the day when we (all of humanity) have used more from ...

Buckle up, everyone; this post is going to be a long one. Today, I wanted to discuss the matter of conspicuous consumption: the art of spending relatively large sums of money on luxury goods. When you ...

This cereal-aisle meltdown is brought to you in part by the $1.6 billion that 44 companies spent on marketing food and beverages to children in 2006. That figure, reported by the Federal Trade ...