It is also worth noting that the postwar emphasis on increasing purchasing power emerged, at least in the United States, from a politics that represented a new kind of moral economy rather than being an aggregate efect of widespread concerns about status position (L. Cohen 2003; Jacobs 2005). The postwar industrial compromise—which pegged real wages to productivity and the cost of living, thereby ensuring that consumption would keep up with expanded production—was primarily a result of collective bargaining, in the context of a particular normative order. The tendency for consumption to keep pace with production reflected a general sentiment that living standards ought to progressively increase for all rather than a competition between individuals for status by way of conspicuous consumption. It is, of course, possible that each class was trying to emulate the consumption of those above it, and therefore, that collective, class-based status aspirations pushed the purchasing power agenda. But if that was the case, why was segmented marketing, which tailored products to the tastes of specific social groups, so successful? The success of segmented marketing strategies, which became prominent in the second half of the twentieth century, indicates the degree to which tastes were stratified, and stratification of tastes suggests a limit to emulative consumption. As we shall see in Chapter 5, there is evidence from social research conducted in mid-century America that the point of consumption for individuals was not to establish status distinctions, but rather was to fit in with collective standards and tastes specific to their reference groups. None of this is to say that status competition does not motivate consumption practices to any degree in the era of mass consumption. In some cases, the concern to increase real income might well in part be inspired by a felt need to keep up with the consumption of “the Joneses.” But the argument that status competition provides an exhaustive explanation for the puzzling bias toward increasing income and consumption under industrial capitalism, nonetheless, remains unconvincing.50
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Time for Things