Caitlin Kenny looks into why wedding dresses are so expensive and ends up concluding its because people arewilling to pay a lot for them: Spending a lot on a wedding dress is a way for the bride to tell the world, Im only going to do this once,runescape items and gold. so Im doing it big.
A related issue, which I think does a slightly better job of illustrating exactly how exorbitant wedding spending can get, is the positional competition element. Nobody wants to have a below-average wedding or a below-average wedding dress. If youre a reasonably prosperous person with some discretionary income, what youd like to do is figure out what its normal to spend and then spend a little bit more than that. Do anything less and youre a cheapskate. The problem,Ragnarok Zenya. of course,Rift Paltinum is that we cant all be above average sowedding spending keeps increasing ster than inflation. You can see the dynamic at work pretty clearly if you look at a poor country like Indonesia where overall material living standards are much lower. People have less money so they suffer in various ways — smaller houses wow gold fast delivery, fewer cars and appliances per capita, less vacation travel. But they dont enjoy their weddings and other mily celebrations less, even though theyre spending a pittance by American standards. The spending is driven by relative considerations, and the comparison class is (relatively) local. The richer a country gets, the more resources people have available to spend keeping Wedding dressesup
is Slates business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media KAL Geons, and the American Prospect. His first book,Heads in the Sand, was published by Wiley in 2008. His second September 2011, The Rent Is Too Damn High, will be published by Simon & Schuster in March 2012.
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