There's a kid in my son's school who can't stop mocking other children for their appearance of a lack of wealth. He keeps finishing off his mocking with how muc

There's a kid in my son's school who can't stop mocking other children for their appearance of a lack of wealth. He keeps finishing off his mocking with how much wealth his parents have and the pool at their home and other luxuries they have access to. They aren't even 10. We are family friends with a person who happens to be a teacher at school. She said it gets worse as they get older. The school is a private one so I assumed it might be due to a higher percentage of children being from more affluent backgrounds so I dug into behaviour at several large public schools who have kids from all backgrounds. It's even worse there. Even the teachers participate in an exercise of thinly veiled mockery of children who cannot afford the entry fee to a school activity or "donation" to the school. Every school I dug into has it in some form or another. And the end result of that is that even children who are from well off background whose parents don't flash it around feel left out when their peers talk about expensive holidays and their parents' luxury vehicles. The children start to ask their parents and put pressure to present themselves as more wealthy. The obsession with displays of wealth has always been there and anecdotally it feels it's getting worse. Maybe I'm too pessimistic but I definitely don't feel it getting any better. The worst part of it is how much the layers keep building themselves up. I know enough families now to know this isn't coincidence; there is even a large amount of debt being built up just to maintain facades of obscene wealth. Once they are in that trap, you can't just exit one day saying "know what? That was a lie". We'll never know about this particular teenager's motivations, but I'd wager that given the school he was in, there were similar pressures that eventually got the better of him :(