Why do we indulge ourselves? It makes economic sense.

The authors are frightfully excited by the notion that America is both trading up and trading down. In other words, while even people on modest salaries will buy things that are almost beyond their means as long as they have that mysterious oomph factor, at the same time they're scouring the supermarkets for bargains in areas where they can't get excited enough to pay over the odds for a fancy name. . . 

The real message, however, is that there are still lots of categories that offer no real opportunity for "trading up". Any would-be entrepreneurs looking for new business opportunities might like to note that the authors believe that the trading-up phenomenon is nothing like complete. They have identified several categories where "there is demand for new luxury goods but not enough supply. Toys, health clubs, bath and body products, and gourmet foods," are just some of them. Most of us could add a much longer list of our own (chief among them is air travel—when will somebody do something to mitigate its horrors?) but it's nice to know that the opportunities for making a fortune haven't dried up. You just need to get there quickly and do it first.