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"The new, subtle ways" of signalling wealth in this article are neither new, subtle, nor interesting. You're telling me:

-Rich people bragging about going to/sending their kids to nice schools

-Eating fancy food

-Ostentatiously namedropping highbrow pop culture

are some sort of recent phenomena? Come on :)

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Traditionally, there was "old money" and "new money" where entry into the old money class didn't rely solely on wealth but also on subtle social signifiers. What's new is the emergence of a class of "new old money" that adopts the same social signalling techniques of old money, even with new wealth.

No, that's not it. The main point of the article has been that the rich, instead of spending outrageous amounts of money on material things, are instead opting for non-material things to spend money on, and to signal their socio-economic status amongst peers. This has traditionally not been the case, where the rich spent a lot of money on fancy cars, houses and such to be as different as possible from other strata of society. Now such ostentatious displays of wealth are no longer sufficient to signal your high socio-economic standing and that is a rather huge change.

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