OldVet on Rising Prices for Luxury Goods

This one is by reader OldVet…

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caption: Oh My God, what does it feel like to be poor?

A Reuters report yesterday says that the Forbes index for the cost of living for the wealthy is rising fast.

I sent it to my kid, who’s finishing up a summer job selling purses at a leather goods store in the Rue de Rennes in Paris . She said she couldn’t understand why people paid 200 Euros for a leather purse.

Prices for luxury goods rose twice as quickly as consumer prices this year, a study found, showing the jet set need even more to fund their lavish lifestyle. Forbes ‘s Cost of Living Extremely Well Index (CLEWI) — which measures the price of a basket of luxury goods — rose by 6 percent in the year to August 2007, Forbes said, more than twice the U.S. consumer inflation rate.

The pain, the horror. . .

Plastic surgery up 17%, a Russian sable coat up 18% will it make the very wealthy flinch? No. Psychiatric fees per hour in New York are unchanged, so fear can be removed for the normal rates.

More to the point for my kid’s enlightenment is this item:

A Shanghai resident recently bought a Hermes crocodile-skin bag for 1.6 million yuan ($213,100), Hermes said in June, equivalent to 65 times the city’s average annual wage.

Any more questions, Kid, on that 200 Euro price tag?

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This one was by reader OldVet.