- EXCLUSIVE: UBS’s Paul Donovan notes that many wealthy Americans don’t perceive themselves as rich, leading to confusion between the reality and perception of wealth, a distortion fueled by social media. Bain & Company’s Claudia D’Arpizio highlights a rise in “luxury shame,” with consumers curbing visible status purchases and luxury brands needing to shift focus from elitism to culture and innovation as social pressures mount.
In times of economic volatility, wealth is often a subject that becomes politicized.
Under Trump 2.0, that means debates over who should be taxed and by how much, what constitutes “wealthy,” and how that private capital should be mobilized to address public finance concerns.
The Oval Office’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has divided opinion after estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found the policies would cost the poorest Americans roughly $1,600 a year while increasing the income of the wealthiest households by an average of $12,000 annually.
This is courtesy of policy tweaks such as an increased exemption threshold for estates and gifts to $15 million, as well as changing the cap amount on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) from $10,000 to $40,000.
One issue with current debates about wealth taxes, says UBS’s chief economist Paul Donovan, is that often, America’s wealthier voters don’t realize they are rich.
Speaking on a roundtable last week, Donovan explained: “A rather interesting issue that we’re starting to see come up more and more in discussions…about things like wealth taxes and inheritance taxes is that increasingly there is a gap between the perception of wealth and the reality of wealth.
“So people will say, ‘Yes, we must be doing a wealth tax for millionaires, but not me, I don’t count as a millionaire’ when in fact, you own a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. You are by definition, a millionaire.”
Donovan continued that social media also distorts wealth. Even if wealth inequality hasn’t changed, he said, people feel worse off because of the extravagance shared online.
“As a result, people are perhaps again getting more confused between their perception of their wealth and the realities of their wealth,” Donovan added.
“Many people are wealthy but they perceive themselves as somehow being disadvantaged because they’re not living the best life of a social media influencer.”
Luxury shame
With wealth becoming an increasingly divisive topic socially—with even the well-off distancing themselves from the reality of their situation—consumers are already curbing their status symbol buys and experiences.
Bain’s spring update on the luxury sector, released last week, shows the industry’s personal goods business in particular has shrunk.
Claudia D’Arpizio, one of the authors of the report, tells Fortune the phrase “luxury shame” was coined during the 2008 financial crisis when wealth was perceived as gauche given the millions of Americans who had lost their homes and jobs.
D’Arpizio added that luxury stores more widely stocked white paper bags to send consumers off with their purchases because individuals didn’t want to be seen with designer carrier bags.
“In the U.S., that was self-induced; people were correcting their behaviors because they were ashamed,” D’Arpizio continued. The trend now, led by Chinese consumers, is governmental.
She explained, “This is a communist regime that pushed luxury consumption in the last 15 years when people were becoming wealthier and wealthier every year. Now that growth is slowing down, there is unemployment on the younger generations, so to prevent tension, they are trying to say to the wealthy people, ‘Don’t show off that you are wealthy in this moment.’”
This social tension is spreading West, added D’Arprrizio, meaning luxury brands should focus less on the perception of being elite and more on being a bastion of culture and innovation.
Rich get richer
That being said, just because the wealthy either don’t want or don’t realize they are rich, that doesn’t mean the engines generating their assets are moving any slower.
“There are two independent drivers that we need to consider, which have no impact on the driver of wealth growth,” Donovan said in response to a question from Fortune. “The first of these is the rise of economic nationalism.”
One need only look at Trump’s America First initiative, but Donovan added the behavior is also prevalent in nations like China.
He said, “Quite often there can be hostility to foreign brands, to foreign companies. That is certainly something that we have seen, for example, with European luxury brands in China.”
Donovan added that a second factor shaping the wealthy’s approach to consumption is that their focus is less on goods and more on fun.
“A question I’m often asked is, What does an economist mean by having fun? The answer is anything you can post about on Instagram,” Donovan tells Fortune. “So it’s foreign travel, it’s meals out, it’s Taylor Swift concerts. To be fair, it is also clothing because obviously, if you’re Instagramming your latest meal, you need to do so in a new outfit.
“These trends which are independent of the whole wealth creation…we’ve got to factor in because they can give the appearance of shame about wealth when in actual fact it’s simply changing consumption patterns for other reasons.”
