How do you define luxury? Is luxury an object of high quality, or and object only a few can afford? The Hyundai ad suggested that it's brand name should be the word for "luxury but affordable." Does a such thing as luxury and affordable exist? My dictionary describes luxury as "the state of great comfort and extravagant living." Great comfort could imply high quality, and extravagant living is inaccessible to many, so that definition doesn't answer the question. What do you think?
This is a big question, so i'll keep it to the subject matter of cars. According to Wikipiedia, luxury vehicles have "pleasant or desirable features beyond strict necessity- at increased expense." From this definition, it looks like luxury is both quality (extra features) and inaccessibility (increased expense). Perhaps, then, Luxury means both high quality and expensive. Do you know of anything you would consider luxury that is only one of the two? If so, let me know.
Well, if luxury must be expensive, than luxury and affordable does not exist. This ties into our class discussions on class; owning luxury items can be added to our definition of the higher class. Luxury items would add to a person's wealth, too, and higher wealth equals higher class, so it all makes sense. What do you think?
Based on my personal opinion, luxury is something only the rich and affluent can afford. As the Wikipedia article you referenced mention, luxury is "at increased expense", something that would likely prevent the lower classes from being able to acquire it. Because lower classes tend to have less money to spend on things other than the bare necessities, it would be much harder for them to be able to afford cars that cost extremely large amounts of money. As to whether luxury has to have quality too, I would like to cite the iPhone app entitled "I am rich", which costs $1000 and does nothing except remind the owner that they were rich enough to be able to afford this app. Although it is an object few people can afford, it has no actual quality. As a result, I believe that to be luxury, an item must merely be expensive and only attainable by the rich.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.geckoandfly.com/2009/05/26/the-most-expensive-apple-iphone-3g-and-ipod-touch-app/