ABSTRACT
Consumption style has become uncoupled from occupation and lifestyles can be purchased on the market. Consumption in a market economy involves spending money: the more money, the more consumption, and the more choice. Developing the classic work of Simmel, Deutschmann analyses the nature of money within contemporary capitalism. Market economies involve an inherent tension between equality and hierarchy. Where the economy involves market relationships, these are in some sense relationships between equals: the world of legal subjects equal before the law, including the law of contract. Different forms of wealth are differently distributed, so housing wealth is much more evenly distributed than financial assets and pension wealth. The expansion of private wealth has been interwoven with a massive expansion of personal debt, especially in liberal market economies. Beginning in the UK in the 1980s and accelerating during the 1990s public discourses linked the spread of mass wealth to notions of entrepreneurial initiative.
