The list of stuff only the super rich can buy has shrunk

livemint.com:

₹10 lakh in today’s money. Today, for half that amount, you can get a first-class return ticket on a Mumbai-New York flight. Billionaires who undertake outlandish space and marine missions are pioneers who pave the way for the same adventures to become mass market.

Some early aviators were rich people who contributed to the evolution of commercial aviation, sacrificing their lives at times in the process. I do not dispute the value of such pioneers, even if they are paid customers. But I suspect it is not their intention to put their lives on the line so that one day I will get to go to space or the ocean floor at reasonable cost.

And that makes the lemons that are sold to them even more ridiculous. There is one fascinating product, though, that is sold to the super-rich. The perception that they are politicians.

Once, the rich were financiers of politicians and often remained in the shadows. This financing was primarily a business expense. But, today, many wealthy people are politicians themselves who have bought their way into positions of social influence.

America has had a very famous example. Back home, we have legislators with declared assets worth hundreds of crores, with ₹1,413 crore the top score among members of legislative assemblies. Some politicians may privately laugh at the modesty of these declarations; their big triumph is that they have bought the social masquerade of activism without being identified publicly as rich people.

There is another useful luxury product for the super-rich, but one the modern superrich haven’t quite grasped—artistic acclaim. Since my teens, I have had a nagging doubt when I read some Western literary classics. What if all this, all of literature was just the expression of the