But your book suggests the larger picture is more complex than that. Yes, the market is not just being driven from the consumer side. We're living in a society where material standards are escalating rapidly. The market provides the goods we can buy, but there is a bias toward upscale goods in the market. This happens because the profit margins tend to be higher with upscale goods.
Many people are willing to pay a premium for status.
What happens is that low-cost or very basic versions of things disappear from the market. We see this happening in housing. It's very hard to buy really basic houses, for example, houses without garages. And you see it in cars. There are far fewer very basic, low-cost cars on the market than there are upscale cars.