The more people become prosperous, the harder it is to maintain the appearance of social status

This has been documented for the better part of twenty years and yet has never gotten much traction.

I do wonder though, whether some of what we now characterize as polarization and partisan extremism isn't perhaps, simply a function of intra-elite status struggle.

Income is not social status or class, but there is sufficiently robust a correlation to warrant the following argument.

In 1967 if you earned $100,000 (in constant 2019 dollars) then you were almost unavoidably clearly among the economic elite.  Less than 10% of the population was up there with you among those high income clouds.  The difference between yourself and those of Low Income was obvious and reasonably obvious between yourself and even Middle Income.

Now, though, you are no longer among the 10%, you are among the nearly 35%.  Income no longer distinguishes you in a way it once did.  Now, there have to be other means of cordoning oneself off from the riff-raff who keep getting richer.  

Thus, I suspect, we end up with virtue signaling and luxury beliefs as a means of preserving not only economic status but social status as well.  The cruel reality is that the Low Income and Middle Income, still would like to enjoy High Income and we continue to make that increasingly possible (a Classical Liberal ideal).  But the more they rise, the less distinction there is attached to the self-anointed elite.

There virtue-signaling and indulgence in luxury beliefs such as Social Justice and Critical Theory are not harmless indulgences though.  The degree to which Low Income and Middle Income mimic those indulgences, the less likely they are to rise in income.  

The self-anointed social status elite both impose a means of distinguishing themselves from the merely rich AND they raise hurdles against more people getting rich and threatening their social status.  It is an evil turn of events. 

Claims of polarization and vicious partisanship are probably misdirected.  All this is an intra-wealthy struggle to maintain distinct social status.