this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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This was based on a question that my economics professor in college had asked us. His question was more to the effect of “What’s a good/service people buy when they have a bit of money, then they stop buying or buy less of it when they get some more money, and then they start buying it again once they have even more money?” — feel free to answer that too.

My first thought was alcohol: lower class people might buy more of it to cope with their difficult situation, whereas upper class people have more money to spend on vices and luxuries such as alcohol. Not sure if this theory holds true.

The best answer I’ve been able to come up with is golf carts, at least in the US. It’s common to see lower class people drive golf carts around their trailer parks or neighborhoods, whereas middle class people rarely do that. An upper class person might live in a wealthy neighborhood with its own built-in golf course, or the person might even own their own golf course(s).

Some dubious investments, such as crypto or donations to certain social organizations or politicians might also qualify?

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[–] solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Cocaine

Eh, that's really for everyone.

[–] Nastybutler@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

I'd change that to "illegal drugs" as lower class can't usually afford cocaine that's not cut with fentanyl, but instead buy weed, shrooms, acid, meth, and other cheap drugs. Rich people, in addition to cocaine also have access to more of the designer drugs like MDMA, not to mention prescription drugs with a high street value that poor folks can't afford unless they're addicted to something like painkillers, but then they'll usually have to go the cheaper route of fentanyl

[–] protist@mander.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Crack cocaine use is pervasive among the lowest income folks in my area, as are meth and K2. And those people sure as hell aren't doing mushrooms or acid. My point is that cocaine use definitely has a bimodal distribution

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Meth makes sense, it's cheap as fuck to produce. Cocaine? I thought that was so expensive nobody could support a habit unless you had essentially unlimited money.

[–] solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

It's more that clean is hard to find / expensive, and that you can fairly safely build up a tolerance and then burn/snort through a fuckton.

I'm pretty sure all you really need is a plant and some gasoline for distilling or whatever it's called.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Crack cocaine has always been a poor man's drug. It's highly adulterated and thus much cheaper