[cat in the hat]

Consider, for example, a black family and a white family each earning $42,500 a year, the median income for a black household during the 1990s. This black family sees that other black families are buying cars, clothes, and other wealth signals that, while stretching this black family's financial resources thin, are technically affordable for a family making $42,500. So, this family decides to buy them, too, in order to keep up with the conspicuous consumers that they compare themselves with.

Now take the white family making $42,500. The average household income among whites in the 1990s was much higher—$66,800. This white family looks around the neighborhood and is more likely to see white families spending on luxuries that are simply beyond their financial reach. The white family making $42,500 is thus too poor to participate in a signaling game with its neighbors, so they don't. As a result, they're spared the cost of competing, just as I am spared the expense of trying to compete with the Wall Street traders I see driving around Manhattan in their Mercedes sedans.

The problem today is that people everywhere, of all colors creeds and backgrounds are trying to compete with the images they see everywhere.
People complain that they are poor and cannot 'get ahead' or break even or get out of debt. These poor downtrodden souls do not see the self imposed problems of spending every penny every month instead of saving some. They have the coolest and newest phone every few months with all the cool apps but no health insurance. They cannot be bothered to get up ten minutes earlier to make lunch (a healthier option as well as less expensive) so they buy a combo meal at Happy Burger. $3 coffee? no problem.
I would truly enjoy sending every self entitled American who says that they are "poor" to some of the places I have worked. Let them live in a mud hut with a straw roof, an oil lamp for light and wood fire to cook their two daily meals.