ABSTRACT
Legislation can deliberately tax the rich and provide assistance for the poor, and the rich may assent to the redistribution. Since there is little legislation for consumption, and since it is supposed to be an area of free and unconstrained choice, it will be difficult, unless by anthropological comparisons, to identify any simple social mechanism that harnesses consumption to social exclusion. The chapter indicates the broad correlation that holds between consumption periodicities and rank, high frequency and low rank tending to go in a certain pattern together. All goods to some extent emanate messages about rank, sets of goods even more so. Consumption periodicities enable us to relate the economists’ concept of permanent income to the intelligent realism with which the household deploys its income over marking services.
