It aint rich people keeping them rich. It's broke and average people trying to keep up with the status quo. There's a high end mall in my city that has a lot of high end brand stores. The Gucci and Louis V store are across from one another. BOTH OF THEM have lines going out the door and down the walkway full of hood/broke/average people EVERY DAY, ALL DAY. Its crazy. I'm guilty myself, I've shamefully stood in both lines to by my wife a couple of bags.
One thing that's always kept me grounded is thinking about the long term.
I got friends/a couple (granted they're doing ok) that would buy these bags/purses once or twice a year.
When they looked back one day they realized they've spent about $80k on bags. Bags.
They could have had $80k sitting there instead of a bunch of bags.
That did it for them. They stopped buying that stuff.
Basically add up how much you've spent and ask yourself what you'd do with that check right now instead of spending it on something dumb.
Even more, what'd that money be if it was spent in an index fund instead?
Edit:
Looking at how much money my friends left on the table rather than being smart:
That $80k (this was around 2010) would've been worth about $300,000 if he dropped it into index funds and pulled that amount out right now.