Bagatelle, a restaurant in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, will
add this $1,000 ice-cream sundae to its menu next month. According
to a press release, the sundae includes vanilla ice cream,
chocolate truffles, French macarons and chocolate vodka sauce,
along with a Dom Perignon Rose sorbet with gold leaves and “gilded
brownies.” The price includes a ring from
Mauboussin made of gold and steel worth $530, putting the price of
the sundae itself around $470.
“In order to gain and hold the esteem of men, it is not sufficient
merely to possess wealth or power,” as Thorstein Veblen wrote
around a century ago. “The wealth or power must be put in evidence,
for esteem is awarded only on evidence.”
Bagatelle’s will be the second $1,000 sundae available in
Manhattan, according to Eater. Even if you estimate the price
of this one at $470 rather than $1,000, it’s fair to assume it will
raise the average price of a sundae in Manhattan by several
percentage points. This is the kind of increase in price you’d
expect if there were a shortage of opportunities for
profitable investment, leading holders of capital with nothing to
spend their money on except for ice cream sundaes. It’s an
illustration of why even very low interest rates might be
inadequate to stimulate demand in an economy with an especially
unequal distribution of wealth, which is a very troubling
possibility for economists such as Larry Summer. Bagatelle’s other
desserts cost $10 each, but instead of selling one dessert each to
47 more customers, Bagatelle hopes, as the recovery progresses, to
sell one $470 sundae to one very wealthy customer. Since producing
the more expensive sundae probably does not require 47 times more
work, it’s easy to see how prices might increase even as
unemployment persists in a lasting economic malaise.
Bagatellle
