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Title: Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess by Robert H. Frank ISBN: 0-684-84234-3 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.46 (24 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Provokes but doesn't think it through
Comment: Mr. Frank's thesis is this: many of the consumer goods we buy are purchased not for the intrinsic pleasure they bring, but for the pleasure of keeping up with or surpassing the Joneses. By taxing consumption instead of earnings, people will buy cheaper luxury goods. This will keep all of the pleasure of the consumption race but raise extra tax dollars to spend on things that everyone truly wants for their intrinsic value - like cleaner air.
It will also have the effect of increasing savings (because income is not taxed until spent, the incentive to invest is boosted). This makes us all richer long-term as capital investments grow our standard of living.
The theory is well-explained -- perhaps too well-explained -- but the proposed solution is not. While Mr. Frank spends a couple of hundred pages explaining the problem, his solution - taxing consumption - is presented without question. But will it work? The goal of producing income is to spend it, and whether it's done now or later, the rich want to spend it all before they die. Doesn't it make sense that not taxing saving would simply defer consumption until later in life, and the rich would buy even *more* opulent goods later? The author never discusses this, or any other potential difficulties. Won't the rich just rent everything instead of buying? Won't people who might otherwise save, be instead persuaded to consume now, since they will be taxed more if they save to buy their dream good in a single future year? The point is not that these objections are unanswerable, but that they seem to never even occur to the author.
As for the disdain with which Mr. Frank treats the acquisition of luxury goods, the reader should be made more than a little uneasy. What he says about social pressure may have some merit, but is this the *only* reason someone buys a Ferrari? And what about those of us who do not feel the need to keep up, and buy goods purely because they will enrich our lives in other ways? Again, these shades of grey do not slow down Mr. Frank's thesis. And the reader who is told he is "polluting" by choosing to wear an expensive suit - the author uses the analogy without qualification or irony - would be justified in feeling that Mr. Frank would have done well to temper the observations in his book with an understanding that human motivations are not as black and white as he thinks.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thought Provoking For Social/Behavioral Science Students
Comment: As the review title indicates, students & professors of economics, politics, psychology and other social & behavioral sciences will benefit from perusing the pages of Bob Frank's commentary on contemporary American life. Regardless of whether you agree with Professor Frank's solution to our society's "arms race of consumerism", the book makes the reader think about the materialism evident in much of the U.S. Using amusing analogies to describe human behavior related to "buying excess," Frank explains these activities with theories of psychology and economics. His insight provokes thought and entertains the reader throughout the book. Whether explaining why many middle class couples spend $5,000 for the latest Viking model gas grill for their patio, or describing how two millionaires childishly built larger and more lavish yachts just to own the biggest and best cruiser in the world, Frank delivers interesting examples which help provide an understanding for why many people do the things they do.
Read this book if you are a student or teacher of the social or behavioral sciences. Whether you agree with Frank's prescription to correct societal consumerism or you don't believe America has a problem, this book entertains the reader and stimulates ideas for discussion. Well worth the read!
Rating: 4
Summary: Luxury Fever also explains why US jobs are disappearing.
Comment: Professor Frank's title for Chaper 10 'smart for one dumb for all' sums up much of the recent business and political behavior in our country.
Jobs are going to China and a flood of imports are drowning our factories because our government and business leaders are practicing "smart for one" while our country slides toward the status of a 3rd world nation.
It is said that a nation's wealth is measured by what it can manufacture - not by what it consumes (who said that?)
Every CEO worth his or her salt these days is moving manufacturing operations overseas as fast as possile to get a piece of the short-term profits under "smart for one". If this continues, the 'dumb for all' effect will doom us to to poverty and China will (again?) rule the world of commerce.
Luxury Fever is a great book which should be read by every person who cares about the USA over the long haul - especially our elected officials. I'd like to see RH Franks (Luxury Fever) team up with Ravi Batra (The Myth of Free Trade) as lobbyists to return sanity to our country's business climate.
Adam Smith has been taken out of context. When he spoke about the "Invisible Hand" (of commerce) there was an ethic in the land that accepted pervasive empathy as a given. Today, our leaders push unbridled avarice and seem to think that empathy is only for the weak 'players'.
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Title: Living It Up : America's Love Affair with Luxury by James B. Twitchell ISBN: 0743245067 Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Paper) Pub. Date: 02 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us by Robert H. Frank, Philip J. Cook ISBN: 0140259953 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need by Juliet B. Schor ISBN: 0060977582 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Trading Up: The New American Luxury by Michael Silverstein, Neil Fiske ISBN: 1591840139 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status by Robert H. Frank ISBN: 0195049454 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1987 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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