Forty years after Tom Wolfe's classic essay, I write that Las Vegas is still a monument to wealth with proletarian taste.

As Wolfe pointed out, the appeal of Las Vegas comes from the way in which it expresses many people's dreams about the American rich. To the typical tourist, every hotel bill, restaurant receipt, theater ticket, store price tag, and casino chit says: You can't really afford this. But other people can! And they have sex with young beauties any time they want!