In Geneva, there is whole range of shops no locals are buying anything, ever. I mean no local swiss bankers, Procter&Gamble global managers, UN high bureaucrats, nobody. Its just that ridiculous.

But every summer (apart from recent covid ones), whole planes come from Arabian gulf. Planes full of ferraris and lambos, so you suddenly see (and hear) a lot of arab plated cars in central europe. These people shop as you describe - come to ie Versace or Piguet shop because its just by the lake, spend ridiculous amount and go to next shop.

Basically these few weeks enable those shops to survive for rest of the year since rentals are crazy.

I wonder if they could have sub-rented out their space in the meantime to make some extra money?

Probably not to just anything, because you have to remain high status. But perhaps host some fancy artists or so.

I think how much time and thought you put into buying things is an inverse parabolic curve. If you don't have much money you put a lot of thought into every purchase, because you have to balance your money to make it cover everything you need. If you have massive amounts of money you also put a lot of thought into every purchase, because you generally only buy things that require a lot of thought (houses, yachts, art, etc). It's the people in the middle who go into shops and buy $10k luggage sets - enough money to cover all their needs easily, but not enough money to be buying things that you need to consider.

Essentially, if you have actual FU money, you're not spending time going to a shop to choose your own luggage. You probably don't even see your luggage. An assistant packs your stuff, a driver puts it on your plane, and a hotel worker unpacks it at the other end. Your luggage is probably some completely boring, utilitarian metal box designed to keep expensive stuff safe.

Eh, different people have different preferences.

Some people _like_ shopping.

Similarly, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, liked to drive himself. He could have people drive him easily. And I must imagine, he probably liked the experience of test driving new cars and picking one that he liked. Even though his assistants probably knew exactly what his preferences in cars were and could have predicted accurately which one he'd end up choosing.

Two centuries ago this would be the only customer type there was. Back when there were no middle class and the only buyers in some goods were the aristocracy and some nouveau riche.

Exact dates depend on country.

Two centuries ago Britain was already well through its Industrial Revolution. Its mass production went hand in hand with mass consumption.

What you describe was probably closer to true for eg Russia.

I would the bottom that it was an impulse purchase. Luggage - of amount - isn't really something you buy without thought. It is likely the family had been considering various styles and price points for a while, and just now decided to pull the trigger.

There was a good "scales of wealth" post I read some time ago, it wasn't so much about hard figures but about what financial decisions you need to think about before doing; it starts with the basics like groceries, if you don't need to think about what to buy, what brands, or what your weekly budget is for groceries, you're up one level.

That scale went up from that, to vacations, to cars or houses, then up to really expensive things like private yachts and airplanes.

It's all relative to income; for whoever they were, a 10K purchase might represent about as much as their monthly income as a six pack of beer would be for me.

And their wealth was probably still only a fraction of what the super rich have.

> [...] probably even more now given the rising levels of wealth inequality [...]

Huh? Global wealth inequality has dropped dramatically in the last few decades.

What's important for luxury sales is not the gap between rich and poor, but that the rich are richer.

I could perhaps have been clearer about the kind of inequality I was talking about - intra-national - but at the very best it's been flat over the last few decades: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/economists-are... I personally don't really buy the post-tax rationale presented in that article though. Pre-tax is more interesting to me in that it's where the money is, not how much spending power people have after tax.

Keep in mind that you get different results looking at income distribution vs wealth distribution.

Also keep in mind that because so much of the wealth of the very rich is tied up in assets like shares, the wealth share of the very rich takes a (comparative) nose dive whenever the economy enters a recession. Their wealth and income drops dramatically more than that of your rank and file employee, or that of someone on government handouts.

Absolutely, the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor in a recession. but on paper the gap between, say, average and top 0.1% narrows.

And, obviously, recessions are bad for both poor and average people. But you wouldn't get that from looking at inequality.

Just another reason to focus on absolute numbers, instead of whether the Joneses have more.

Btw, why do you want to focus on where the gross money is, instead of what you can buy after taxes with your money? People don't eat money, usually.