For the great body of the people in any modern community, the proximate
ground of expenditure in excess of what is required for physical comfort
is not a conscious effort to excel in the expensiveness of their visible
consumption, so much as it is a desire to live up to the conventional
standard of decency in the amount and grade of goods consumed. This
desire is not guided by a rigidly invariable standard, which must be
lived up to, and beyond which there is no incentive to go. The standard
is flexible; and especially it is indefinitely extensible, if only time
is allowed for habituation to any increase in pecuniary ability and
for acquiring facility in the new and larger scale of expenditure that
follows such an increase. It is much more difficult to recede from a
scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to extend the accustomed
scale in response to an accession of wealth. Many items of customary
expenditure prove on analysis to be almost purely wasteful, and they
are therefore honorific only, but after they have once been incorporated
into the scale of decent consumption, and so have become an integral
part of one's scheme of life, it is quite as hard to give up these as
it is to give up many items that conduce directly to one's physical
comfort, or even that may be necessary to life and health. That is
to say, the conspicuously wasteful honorific expenditure that confers
spiritual well-being may become more indispensable than much of that
expenditure which ministers to the "lower" wants of physical well-being
or sustenance only. It is notoriously just as difficult to recede from a
"high" standard of living as it is to lower a standard which is already
relatively low; although in the former case the difficulty is a moral
one, while in the latter it may involve a material deduction from the
physical comforts of life.
But while retrogression is difficult, a fresh advance in conspicuous
expenditure is relatively easy; indeed, it takes place almost as a
matter of course. In the rare cases where it occurs, a failure to
increase one's visible consumption when the means for an increase are
at hand is felt in popular apprehension to call for explanation, and
unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed to those who fall short in
this respect. A prompt response to the stimulus, on the other hand,
is accepted as the normal effect. This suggests that the standard
of expenditure which commonly guides our efforts is not the average,
ordinary expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption
that lies just beyond our reach, or to reach which requires some strain.
The motive is emulation--the stimulus of an invidious comparison which
prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in the habit of classing
ourselves. Substantially the same proposition is expressed in the
commonplace remark that each class envies and emulates the class next
above it in the social scale, while it rarely compares itself with those
below or with those who are considerably in advance. That is to say, in
other words, our standard of decency in expenditure, as in other ends of
emulation, is set by the usage of those next above us in reputability;
until, in this way, especially in any community where class distinctions
are somewhat vague, all canons of reputability and decency, and all
standards of consumption, are traced back by insensible gradations to
the usages and habits of thought of the highest social and pecuniary
class--the wealthy leisure class.
It is for this class to determine, in general outline, what scheme of
Life the community shall accept as decent or honorific; and it is
their office by precept and example to set forth this scheme of social
salvation in its highest, ideal form. But the higher leisure class
can exercise this quasi-sacerdotal office only under certain material
limitations. The class cannot at discretion effect a sudden revolution
or reversal of the popular habits of thought with respect to any of
these ceremonial requirements. It takes time for any change to permeate
the mass and change the habitual attitude of the people; and especially
it takes time to change the habits of those classes that are socially
more remote from the radiant body. The process is slower where the
mobility of the population is less or where the intervals between the
several classes are wider and more abrupt. But if time be allowed, the
scope of the discretion of the leisure class as regards questions of
form and detail in the community's scheme of life is large; while as
regards the substantial principles of reputability, the changes which
it can effect lie within a narrow margin of tolerance. Its example and
precept carries the force of prescription for all classes below it; but
in working out the precepts which are handed down as governing the form
and method of reputability--in shaping the usages and the spiritual
attitude of the lower classes--this authoritative prescription
constantly works under the selective guidance of the canon of
conspicuous waste, tempered in varying degree by the instinct of
workmanship. To those norms is to be added another broad principle of
human nature--the predatory animus--which in point of generality and of
psychological content lies between the two just named. The effect of the
latter in shaping the accepted scheme of life is yet to be discussed.
The canon of reputability, then, must adapt itself to the economic
circumstances, the traditions, and the degree of spiritual maturity
of the particular class whose scheme of life it is to regulate. It is
especially to be noted that however high its authority and however true
to the fundamental requirements of reputability it may have been at
its inception, a specific formal observance can under no circumstances
maintain itself in force if with the lapse of time or on its
transmission to a lower pecuniary class it is found to run counter
to the ultimate ground of decency among civilized peoples, namely,
serviceability for the purpose of an invidious comparison in pecuniary
success. It is evident that these canons of expenditure have much to
say in determining the standard of living for any community and for any
class. It is no less evident that the standard of living which prevails
at any time or at any given social altitude will in its turn have much
to say as to the forms which honorific expenditure will take, and as
to the degree to which this "higher" need will dominate a people's
consumption. In this respect the control exerted by the accepted
standard of living is chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost
solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that
has once become habitual.
A standard of living is of the nature of habit. It is an habitual scale
and method of responding to given stimuli. The difficulty in the way
of receding from an accustomed standard is the difficulty of breaking
a habit that has once been formed. The relative facility with which an
advance in the standard is made means that the life process is a process
of unfolding activity and that it will readily unfold in a new direction
whenever and wherever the resistance to self-expression decreases. But
when the habit of expression along such a given line of low resistance
has once been formed, the discharge will seek the accustomed outlet even
after a change has taken place in the environment whereby the external
resistance has appreciably risen. That heightened facility of expression
in a given direction which is called habit may offset a considerable
increase in the resistance offered by external circumstances to the
unfolding of life in the given direction. As between the various habits,
or habitual modes and directions of expression, which go to make up an
individual's standard of living, there is an appreciable difference in
point of persistence under counteracting circumstances and in point
of the degree of imperativeness with which the discharge seeks a given
direction.
That is to say, in the language of current economic theory, while men
are reluctant to retrench their expenditures in any direction, they are
more reluctant to retrench in some directions than in others; so that
while any accustomed consumption is reluctantly given up, there are
certain lines of consumption which are given up with relatively extreme
reluctance. The articles or forms of consumption to which the consumer
clings with the greatest tenacity are commonly the so-called necessaries
of life, or the subsistence minimum. The subsistence minimum is of
course not a rigidly determined allowance of goods, definite and
invariable in kind and quantity; but for the purpose in hand it may
be taken to comprise a certain, more or less definite, aggregate of
consumption required for the maintenance of life. This minimum, it
may be assumed, is ordinarily given up last in case of a progressive
retrenchment of expenditure. That is to say, in a general way, the
most ancient and ingrained of the habits which govern the individual's
life--those habits that touch his existence as an organism--are the
most persistent and imperative. Beyond these come the higher
wants--later-formed habits of the individual or the race--in a somewhat
irregular and by no means invariable gradation. Some of these higher
wants, as for instance the habitual use of certain stimulants, or the
need of salvation (in the eschatological sense), or of good repute, may
in some cases take precedence of the lower or more elementary wants. In
general, the longer the habituation, the more unbroken the habit, and
the more nearly it coincides with previous habitual forms of the life
process, the more persistently will the given habit assert itself. The
habit will be stronger if the particular traits of human nature which
its action involves, or the particular aptitudes that find exercise
in it, are traits or aptitudes that are already largely and profoundly
concerned in the life process or that are intimately bound up with the
life history of the particular racial stock. The varying degrees of ease
with which different habits are formed by different persons, as well as
the varying degrees of reluctance with which different habits are given
up, goes to say that the formation of specific habits is not a matter
of length of habituation simply. Inherited aptitudes and traits of
temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding
what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of
life. And the prevalent type of transmitted aptitudes, or in other words
the type of temperament belonging to the dominant ethnic element in
any community, will go far to decide what will be the scope and form
of expression of the community's habitual life process. How greatly the
transmitted idiosyncrasies of aptitude may count in the way of a rapid
and definitive formation of habit in individuals is illustrated by the
extreme facility with which an all-dominating habit of alcoholism
is sometimes formed; or in the similar facility and the similarly
inevitable formation of a habit of devout observances in the case of
persons gifted with a special aptitude in that direction. Much the same
meaning attaches to that peculiar facility of habituation to a specific
human environment that is called romantic love.
Men differ in respect of transmitted aptitudes, or in respect of
the relative facility with which they unfold their life activity in
particular directions; and the habits which coincide with or proceed
upon a relatively strong specific aptitude or a relatively great
specific facility of expression become of great consequence to the man's
well-being. The part played by this element of aptitude in determining
the relative tenacity of the several habits which constitute the
standard of living goes to explain the extreme reluctance with which men
give up any habitual expenditure in the way of conspicuous consumption.
The aptitudes or propensities to which a habit of this kind is to be
referred as its ground are those aptitudes whose exercise is comprised
in emulation; and the propensity for emulation--for invidious
comparison--is of ancient growth and is a pervading trait of human
nature. It is easily called into vigorous activity in any new form, and
it asserts itself with great insistence under any form under which it
has once found habitual expression. When the individual has once
formed the habit of seeking expression in a given line of honorific
expenditure--when a given set of stimuli have come to be habitually
responded to in activity of a given kind and direction under the
guidance of these alert and deep-reaching propensities of emulation--it
is with extreme reluctance that such an habitual expenditure is given
up. And on the other hand, whenever an accession of pecuniary strength
puts the individual in a position to unfold his life process in larger
scope and with additional reach, the ancient propensities of the race
will assert themselves in determining the direction which the new
unfolding of life is to take. And those propensities which are already
actively in the field under some related form of expression, which are
aided by the pointed suggestions afforded by a current accredited
scheme of life, and for the exercise of which the material means and
opportunities are readily available--these will especially have much to
say in shaping the form and direction in which the new accession to
the individual's aggregate force will assert itself. That is to say,
in concrete terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an
element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's ability
to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for some accredited
line of conspicuous consumption.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity
for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of
the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity
for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so
far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is
virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form
of conspicuous waste. The need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands
ready to absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency
or output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have
been provided for. Where this result does not follow, under modern
conditions, the reason for the discrepancy is commonly to be sought in
a rate of increase in the individual's wealth too rapid for the habit of
expenditure to keep abreast of it; or it may be that the individual in
question defers the conspicuous consumption of the increment to a later
date--ordinarily with a view to heightening the spectacular effect
of the aggregate expenditure contemplated. As increased industrial
efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with
less labor, the energies of the industrious members of the community are
bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous expenditure,
rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace. The strain is not
lightened as industrial efficiency increases and makes a lighter strain
possible, but the increment of output is turned to use to meet this
want, which is indefinitely expansible, after the manner commonly
imputed in economic theory to higher or spiritual wants. It is owing
chiefly to the presence of this element in the standard of living that
J. S. Mill was able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all
the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any
human being." The accepted standard of expenditure in the community
or in the class to which a person belongs largely determines what his
standard of living will be. It does this directly by commending
itself to his common sense as right and good, through his habitually
contemplating it and assimilating the scheme of life in which it
belongs; but it does so also indirectly through popular insistence
on conformity to the accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of
propriety, under pain of disesteem and ostracism. To accept and
practice the standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable
and expedient, commonly to the point of being indispensable to personal
comfort and to success in life. The standard of living of any class, so
far as concerns the element of conspicuous waste, is commonly as high as
the earning capacity of the class will permit--with a constant tendency
to go higher. The effect upon the serious activities of men is therefore
to direct them with great singleness of purpose to the largest possible
acquisition of wealth, and to discountenance work that brings no
pecuniary gain. At the same time the effect on consumption is to
concentrate it upon the lines which are most patent to the observers
whose good opinion is sought; while the inclinations and aptitudes whose
exercise does not involve a honorific expenditure of time or substance
tend to fall into abeyance through disuse.
Through this discrimination in favor of visible consumption it has come
about that the domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as
compared with the éclat of that overt portion of their life that is
carried on before the eyes of observers. As a secondary consequence of
the same discrimination, people habitually screen their private life
from observation. So far as concerns that portion of their consumption
that may without blame be carried on in secret, they withdraw from all
contact with their neighbors, hence the exclusiveness of people, as
regards their domestic life, in most of the industrially developed
communities; and hence, by remoter derivation, the habit of privacy and
reserve that is so large a feature in the code of proprieties of the
better class in all communities. The low birthrate of the classes upon
whom the requirements of reputable expenditure fall with great urgency
is likewise traceable to the exigencies of a standard of living based
on conspicuous waste. The conspicuous consumption, and the consequent
increased expense, required in the reputable maintenance of a child is
very considerable and acts as a powerful deterrent. It is probably the
most effectual of the Malthusian prudential checks.
The effect of this factor of the standard of living, both in the way of
retrenchment in the obscurer elements of consumption that go to physical
comfort and maintenance, and also in the paucity or absence of children,
is perhaps seen at its best among the classes given to scholarly
pursuits. Because of a presumed superiority and scarcity of the gifts
and attainments that characterize their life, these classes are by
convention subsumed under a higher social grade than their pecuniary
grade should warrant. The scale of decent expenditure in their case
is pitched correspondingly high, and it consequently leaves an
exceptionally narrow margin disposable for the other ends of life. By
force of circumstances, their habitual sense of what is good and right
in these matters, as well as the expectations of the community in the
way of pecuniary decency among the learned, are excessively high--as
measured by the prevalent degree of opulence and earning capacity of the
class, relatively to the non-scholarly classes whose social equals
they nominally are. In any modern community where there is no priestly
monopoly of these occupations, the people of scholarly pursuits are
unavoidably thrown into contact with classes that are pecuniarily their
superiors. The high standard of pecuniary decency in force among these
superior classes is transfused among the scholarly classes with but
little mitigation of its rigor; and as a consequence there is no class
of the community that spends a larger proportion of its substance in
conspicuous waste than these.