Ironically a desire for such social signalling requires being poor enough that you believe the item is worth a vast and near unobtainable amount of money making it seem like a very impressive signal to you. That’s what makes these items desirable. As in these signals can be a sign of just how poor you are as opposed to how wealthy.
A classic case is when you observe teenager targeted status signalling trends. This can be as low value as an expensive shirt, ie shirts branded ‘supreme’ costing $300 which isn’t worth signalling to anyone who pays rent or a mortgage. But to a teenager? Wow man $300! such status!!! On the flip side if we see someone above teenager age wearing such teenager targeted status symbols we reasonably subconsciously assume they live with their parents and have very little income.
This continues up the wealth chain forever. Status symbols are invariably a way to see just how little people actually have because the person wearing the status symbol clearly believes the value of what they are flaunting is impressive.
Status symbols aren’t a signal of how much money you have so much as signal of what you believe to be an incredible amount of wealth to flaunt.
Well framed. I will add though that it's not entirely indicative of how much one thinks is a lot; it can also be, as was explained to me, that for ultra wealthy people, the price, at any magnitude becomes a rounding error.
half a million for a car sounds absurd to me, but it's 0.5% of $100M. Compare that to $50k car on a ~$200k median net-worth US household.