Poverty And Progress
Trishaw and Range Rover, GLF.
A lot of progressive values are the default if you’re poor. Eating less meat, not using cars, consuming less electricity, buying local food. While someone in Brooklyn will pay exorbitant amounts (and attention) to bicycle to work, eat organic food and minimize their carbon footprint, this is what a poor Sri Lankan does by default.
It’s actually kinda funny. Development means more consumption – you move from the bus to a motorbike, bike to car, car to plane. In the same way, you go from hal maso to chicken to burgers and processed food. Then, it seems that after a certain point, you develop awareness that this was kinda a bad idea and go back, except with an iPad.
This may not be a ground-breaking observation, but the current tax code is primarily responsible for driving incentive for consumption exponentially along the income curve. the more you earn, the more incentives you have to increase consume exponentially: high business (and even individuals income) tax levels incentivise them to reduce taxable income by spending on vehicles and other non-taxable benefits for employees instead of increasing their salaries – which they could save.
More on that here: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/the-darwin-economy
Your observation is not applicable to sri lanka. We have luxury taxes that often amount to 200%