Classy Quotes Part Eight

The moment they lost the upper hand in conversation, there would be a sudden pulling of rank, a deliberate glazing of the eyes, or a neatly aimed belittling joke… Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph Nov 2011 on David Cameron and Old Etonians

Large increases in income and wealth have promoted top earners to buy bigger and better, which has shifted the frame of reference that defines what those just below the top deem necessary or desirable. So that group spends more, too, and its spending similarly influences the group just below. And so on all the way down. The problem for middle-income families is that house prices and school quality are closely linked. So even though these families don’t earn much more than they did several decades ago, they must buy bigger more expensive houses than before, or else send their children to below-average schools. To pay for these houses, they spend more than they earn and carry record levels of debt. In short, increased wealth and spending at the top of the economic pyramid sets off "expenditure cascades" that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class. Cornell economics professor Robert Frank

In the documentary series which finished on Friday evening, the heiress Tamara Ecclestone set out to prove that she isn't "a pointless, quite spoilt, really stupid, vacuous, empty human being". This endeavour was not wholly successful. Channel 5 showed her supervising the refurbishment of her £45m home in London, in which she commissioned a £1m bathtub carved from Mexican crystal, an underground swimming pool complex, her own nightclub, a lift for her Ferrari, a bowling alley with crystal-studded balls and a spa and massage parlour for her five dogs, to save her the trouble of taking them to Harrods to have their hair sprayed and their nails painted. Guardian November 22, 2011

No 'we' worse than the weekend-colour-supplement 'we'. @zone_styx

They buy private services, they don’t engage with society. Woman on #bbcnews24 on the very highly paid

More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.