I would guess that the median* wage on HN is probably around 5x what your brother-in-law makes. And I would also guess that many of us are perfectly content with old phones, old cars, and generally reduced consumption. Hell, I buy clothes at thrift/resale shops when I find something nice that fits.

What are people of means (relatively) seeing? Is it because we have more leisure time and can afford to filter the media we consume?

*I'm consciously using median because I would guess that FAANG and the coasts skew the mean.

Like I mend clothes and something I do the visible mending stitch patterns. I'm sure people judge us and think we're poor, but I don't really care because I'm not. Alternatively, doing high effort things like mending clothes can seem kind of cute and novel if you aren't poor.

More or less. Cash, wealth, and access to credit afford you a number of avenues to avoid trouble, or else get out of it when you realize that you're in it. Time infused with money also usually returns more than bare time, as anyone who can hire a personal trainer vs spending hours trying to put together an effective training regimen can attest to.

There's a part of me that wonders if a lot of it boils down to education. My brother-in-law is relatively smart and able to learn new stuff fairly quickly, but he doesn't really have any education past high-school. Being better trained at math and compsci would probably help him realize the value for his purchases a bit better.

Maybe that's what the difference is. Being able to afford these things means you might not feel a similar need to posture that you can afford a certain lifestyle that you really can't. I'm guessing that at minimum wage most would struggle financially especially in a large city like NYC, so being able to pull the newest iPhone out of their pocket might be their way of assuring themselves and people around them that they are doing alright financially.

Now that I make more, I spend even less than I did before. The reward finally justifies the work. It doesn't bear out mathematically, only emotionally.

Advertisment almost never works on me, so it's hard for me to imagine it's so effective on everyone else.

That's why it works on them.

I buy warehouse store house-brand laundry detergent, but if you put me on Family Feud and asked me to name a detergent brand, it'd be Tide.

Maybe you're one of the lucky people that advertising truly does not work on, and fair enough, but I seriously doubt that these big megacorporations would spend billions of dollars on ads if there weren't some measurable effect on a majority of people.

Not sure if I’m filtering out ads more (haven’t had a TV for over a decade), or the tech crowd tend to be more logical. But for me personally I just don’t care about what other people think, I tend to focus on utility. But then again I don’t think twice about spending $200 on a really nice meal, so maybe just difference judgement of value.

I'm not a huge fan of the "rich people are more naturally inclined to be rich, which is why they're rich" arguments. There are plenty of examples about how the system is somewhat rigged to keep people poor.

OTOH - its a device that you use for hours and hours a day, for entertainment, organization, communication, and a camera. Having a "better" one is a decent investment if it helps all those areas.

"American society" is the environment in which status symbols dictate the character of interactions. Wealthier people tend to value actions or experiences over objects (Do you recycle? Did you go to a "good" school?), and judge based on that, but that's not an absolute rule.

And the shaming part, I literally don't care what other people think about me in terms of these things. I dress with dignity, have good hygiene, etc so there's nothing guilting me about their expectations.

Then you need to change your friends.

But, we're getting to the point where newer phones really aren't any better than older ones.

I love my SE. I really don't want a phone any bigger than the SE.

It’s ok, but still a bit bigger than I’d like. Several apps are now usable again, such as the DB (German railways) app, which I became really dependent on after selling my car.

I can’t stomach the thought of spending 500 EUR on a phone, much less 1100. I’ve gotten cheap as I enter middle age.

Apple has made this (buying, or rather leasing, a new iPhone every year) a lot easier to get addicted to and seemingly cheaper through the iPhone Upgrade Program.