In the region I come from it's hard to escape the topic of inequality, it's just something you grow up with, especially as urban planning is virtually non-existent, you basically open your right window and it's total misery, you open the left one and there's a shocking display of opulence. There's little "average". Opposite poles coexist, with all the tension that coexistence entails, and when you're in the middle, you know you're hanging from a very fine thread, what's likely to happen (and usually happens more than once in your lifetime if you're middle class) is having a taste of misery, but moving up the ladder can happen too, and when you do that and are on 'safe ground', you can neglect your way up or your surroundings.
To me, middle class is a one of the trickiest, often most dangerous, sectors of society. Because usually, it's the majority, they tend to have access to mental stimulus and awareness, but the seduction of wealth and the nightmare of poverty comes in subtle (or not so subtle) daily reminders, and that weakens its power as a majority. It keeps them fragmented. The poor unify through mutual demands (education, access to staple food, services, healthcare, you name it) and the rich unify in their right to posses several 'options' of living life as they wish to, cause it's a free world, right?. Middle class doesn't unify for much, they're not entitled to less, they're entitled to the shopping trips and luxury of the rich and if they can't have it often, something's wrong with equality. The reasoning is rarely based on looking down and asking why I do have this and why do they not?, this is actually a trait shared among middle and upper class, that the answer is often "because I worked hard" "because my parents worked hard" "because I didn't drop out of school?" "because I didn't just stay there hungry, I went out and found my opportunities", they're never conditioned by society and/or an inherited set of conditions. It's an individualistic talent they possess that has pushed them up and set them apart, from the poor, from the rich, from their own middle class..
It's too much of a complex topic to think luxury is responsible of inequality. I don't think it is. Does it thrive on inequality? yes it does, to some extent, in the majority of countries. Is occupying a high-end restaurant because only wealthy people can afford it as effective as occupying the center of transactions that sustain inequality? No way. A waste of time imo. And divisive.
Kind of all over the topic, sorry, I do think neoliberalism should've been stopped decades ago, by occupying wall street, fomenting consciousness among citizens on the repercussions this would have. We're on to the next chapter at this point (globalization), it's difficult, but the root remains on the way we've decided to interpret an economical system, that's what needs pressure in order to be regulated, never too late for regulations, and quite frankly, I do believe in capitalism, luxury business is bound to exist in a capitalist system, but it cannot emerge upon poverty, it needs a regulated structure, like the capitalist system altogether anyway.. and that's what needs diffusion and activism, not going after the furs of someone whose actions are within the legal framework but the legal framework itself, why has it not been revised after continual failure?, so yeah, I think Occupy Wall Street is (or was??) was correct in going for the jugular, and not the luxurious scarf!
