Great discussion at Marginal Revolution on the status/quality ceiling for various products. As is often the case at MR, the comments are just as good as the post. An MR reader notes that the status range for smartphones is not particularly wide. That is to say, even if you're Bill Gates about the best you can do is a really good Blackberry. (Or an iPhone? Who knows?) Well, even newspaper columnists and plumbers have Blackberrys these days, so how is the status-conscious rich person supposed to boost his self esteem?

That leads to a discussion about what other product lines have status plateaus, ie., what else do rich and not-so-rich consume alike, side by side?. Newspapers? Movies? MR commenter JCL suggests this is more common in the U.S. than you think and posts a great quote from Andy Warhol.

"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."