[4] Ruling classes make claims in defense of the ascribed superiority of wealth inherited through "blood ... and the concept of proper breeding".
Furthermore, the isolation that minority nouveaux riches experience within their own class leads them "to prioritize issues of radical justice, civil liberties, and religious tolerance over pure economic self-interest".
[4] These newcomers to economic power are subject to even greater scrutiny from their lack of historical prestige as seen through Dye's comments which reference the new rich as "uncouth" and "uncultured".
[neutrality is disputed] In 1929, Mrs. Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, who herself married into a family that had once been considered parvenu and lacking in pedigree, protested that "the nouveau riche... is making places like Palm Beach no more exclusive than Coney Island.
[10] In 18th-century Europe, old-money families attempted to raise themselves above the nouveaux riches by sensitively renovating their ancestral residences to allude to their antiquity.
[citation needed] In the Dutch Republic, the nobility sought this as an advantage over the merchant burghers of Amsterdam and a similar trend arose in the French court.
This term is generally used to emphasize that the individual was previously part of a higher socioeconomic rank and that such wealth that provided the means for the acquisition of goods or luxuries is currently unobtainable.