Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

For Veblen, one of the most pernicious effects of such social influence was the rise of what he called ‘conspicuous consumption’: the appeal of buying luxury products and services to signal our status to others in the hope of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Joseph Stiglitz points out that this effect is particularly concerning today in the context of high inequality, both within and between countries. There is a ‘well-documented lifestyle effect’, he notes, in which ‘people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviourism is very real.’34