Professor Robert Frank of Cornell University, the author of Luxury Fever, compares conspicuous consumption in an economy like ours to the military arms race, and we already know that's destined to end in mutually assured destruction.
The key to countering this headlong rush towards ever-more expensive disappointment is to switch from conspicuous to inconspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is about quantity, inconspicuous consumption is about quality, about reallocating your resources to those things that make you happy, rather than those that you've been told will ease your status anxiety.
