I'm not sure how what you are saying relates to social mobility. Most European countries, but not Britain, have a lot more social mobility than the US: http://w

I'm not sure how what you are saying relates to social mobility. Most European countries, but not Britain, have a lot more social mobility than the US: http://www.oecd.org/eco/public-finance/chapter%205%20gfg%202010.pdf http://www.oecd.org/eco/public-finance/chapter%205%20gfg%202... There are of course many different measures of social mobility so this may not be a generally accepted fact. I feel that language dominates all other signals in Europe, which may be the reason why it doesn't make much sense to buy luxury goods to signal status.