In defense of luxury.

Allow me to introduce you to my first car: a Mercedes S-Class

If only.

My actual first car was a clapped-out Chevy Lumina (though she was good to me). But what my car did have were airbags and ABS brakes-- two features that were once considered to be luxury features exclusive to cars like the S-Class, yet somehow found their way onto a car that I bought from my cousin for $800. If it seems like I'm getting somewhere, it's because I'm trying to.

Research is expensive. There's not really any way around that unfortunate fact, nor around the equally unfortunate fact that someone has to pay for it. I don't know about you, but I definitely can't afford to. Here's where luxury comes in. If rich people want to pay prices that would make you or I limp at the knees in order to have the latest-and-greatest gadgets and doodads then, hey, they have my best wishes. The money that luxury consumers pay for the honor of being the first to use these newer and better technologies pays for the R&D necessary to bring them to the public. The simple truth of the matter is that we have relatively cheap access to countless tech breakthroughs made on the dime of the sort of people driving around in that S-Class.

All this to say next time you get cut-off by some smug businessman in a Merc (probably not using his blinkers either), you can feel a little better knowing that he's paying the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses tax that you benefit from.

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