Appeal to Wealth

Appeal To Wealth

Claiming that the position is correct because the rich or famous support it. This is the basis behind Celebrity Endorsements, especially when the celebrity's claim to fame is not relevant to the issue. See Screw the Rules, I Have Money.

Examples of Appeal to Wealth include:

Advertising

• Lampshaded all to hell and back by a Sprite commercial that had NBA player Grant Hill doing the standard "Sprite is what I drink when my thirst really needs quenching" shtick while pictures of him holding fistfuls of cash appeared in the corner, with accompanying cash register sounds. The final screen said, "Drink Sprite because you like it. Not because an athlete says he does." This was used to wind down the "Grant Hill Drinks Sprite" ad campaign and kickoff the "Image is Nothing. Thirst Is Everything. Obey Your Thirst." campaign
  • Ironically, the "Obey Your Thirst" campaign slowly began to play Appeal to Wealth straight, with a small statue character named Thirst fighting celebrities to get to Sprite first.

Live-Action TV

• Lampshaded on 30 Rock:

Tracy: Jenna, we're the most important people here, right?
Jenna: Well of course, Tracy. We're actors. If we didn't exist, how would people know who to vote for?

Western Animation

• In one episode of The Simpsons, Marge was trying to collect signatures for a petition with limited success... until Mr. Burns signed.

Real Life

• The link between vaccines and autism, although now well refuted, gained much of its popularity because Jenny McCarthy endorsed it.
  • In the UK, many blame Prime Minister Tony Blair's refusal to explicitly state whether he had his children vaccinated for the then-popularity of the anti-vaccination movement, which arguably combines this with Appeal to Irrelevant Authority.
• A lot of people today embrace the inverse: if someone from Hollywood said it, it must be bullshit. That is equally fallacious.
• A variation is arguing that price is directly proportional to how good something is; the "You Get What You Pay For" argument usually takes the form "X costs more than Y, therefore X is superior in every way to Y." This is not true; for example, a Motorola Aura costs six times more than a Blackberry Curve but does not have a full keyboard, and a $2500 Volvo 240 station wagon makes a better town car that a $2 million McLaren F1.
  • There is some logic to this one, as economics dictates that in ideal circumstances nobody will buy an object for more than they value it, and nobody will sell it for less than they can. Even so, there are a variety of reasons this might not result in the more expensive object being better, such as having a target demographic with different tastes than you, an object of which little is produced being sold to only those who like it the most (and thus sold for more) etc.
  • In economics, this is called the Snub factor. That, generally, demand will decrease as price increases. But for some things, as price increases, demand increases.
• A demonstrable direct relation between wealth and the argument is an aversion. For instance "I think we should go to Samarkand and buy silk because rich people back home are crazy about silk" is not a fallacy, it is a proposed business venture.