As the U.S. economy continues to expand at a sluggish pace, some sectors are seeing impressive growth. Luxury airlines, for example, and hyper-expensive New York City condos.
Today, economists tend to see anything that boosts consumption and production as a good thing. But that was decidedly not the case in earlier centuries. Looking at Dutch society, historian Jan De Vries explains that the prevailing view of luxury shifted dramatically when the country developed a prosperous middle class.
-JSTOR Daily
