from Hacker News

How the luxury industry makes a fortune through deception

by xvirk on 9/8/17, 11:06 PM with 2 comments

• by Nomentatus on 9/9/17, 12:53 AM

  All the more reason to enable people to signal their wealth (sexual fitness) and raise taxes at the same time - by repurposing "Sumptuary Laws." For example: If you want a car that's white, yellow or blue, no extra tax. If you want a red car that's a significant tax. If you want a purple car, that's a really big tax. Note that, with Sumptuary Taxes, you don’t have to be wasteful or conspicuously consume, or pour a large amount of carbon into the atmosphere in order to signal your wealth - the red paint and purple paint don’t cost much more than blue or grey. So this is also a very green proposal.

  With Sumptuary Taxes you can show people you're rich and they're not and help the commonweal at the same time: showing that you're one of the responsible, caring rich.

  (Sumptuary – related to the word sumptuous, of course.)

  Sumtuary Laws were tried in England in the Fourteenth Century, but for almost the reverse purpose – merely to prevent poor people from wearing clothes that resembled the clothes rich people wore. This didn’t raise any revenue and was intended to save rich people money while increasing social barriers. The laws weren’t very successful and they didn’t last long.