If you're judging other people by the objects they carry, then you are just as bad if not worse than they supposedly are - after all, you are reducing them to what they own. That's just shallow. It never makes sense to judge what someone else deserves or what's even considered a luxury for other people. Unless you've gotten to know the person and have heard them rant on and on about status and material goods, then how can you judge them?
People who have problems with other people's spending tend to be the jealous type. If you have your code of ethics and way of life, fine, teach your kids that, but why does anyone else have to live by your standards? "Luxury" is a relative term. We all buy things that cost a bit more than the cheapest option available. If we really lived our ideals about saving money and being frugal, we'd all be shopping at Walmart. It's not for us to judge what's reasonable and what's out of budget for another family.
It's totally nonsensical to try to infer someone's attitude about what they have simply by its price tag. There are brats from families that can't afford anything who think that they deserve everything, and there are grateful kids in wealthy families. In the end, no kid really "deserved" the poverty or the wealth that they were born into, that's just what they got. There is no law of nature that says everyone must have personally worked for every object they've ever owned.
We should all be teaching our kids to take a look at what standard of living they are comfortable with and to aim to support themselves at that level, not to look at others and decide whether the money they've spent is justified. Just focus on yourself and your own life. Who cares if so and so if trying to show off?
My family is middle class and if my parents bought me a $100 device for a gift, that would be pretty normal. But in some households, that would be an extravagant gift that they could not afford. Just like in my family a $1000 gift is rather extravagant. But there are some households where goods that are considered luxury to most people are just the norm. To the third party it looks like spoiling your kids, but on the inside, it just is each family's own standard of living and the kids have not known anything else. If they expect to go into professions that allow them to continue this standard of living for themselves, I don't see what the problem is. They are living realistically within their means and their kid's projected means.
My parents covered my tuition and computer when I moved to college, but that doesn't make me a spoiled brat who doesn't appreciate the value of money. I still understand it's important to save and plan for the future so that you can in fact make those purchases. I'm so sick of hearing people kvetch about entitlement when it's really just them having some feeling of the world being unfair because they had to pay for things that other people didn't have to pay for. Yes, that is too bad but just cuz you feel bad, doesn't give you the right to judge others.
I can't believe that other people would hold it against me that I had generous (at least financially) parents. They had a terrible marriage and the one thing I really wanted when growing up was just for them to stop screaming at each other. That never happened. So it's hard to weigh everything simply by the price tag. I find it cruel that someone could say I was spoiled just because my parents could afford things while in reality my childhood was rather miserable because of their bad relationship. I did not come out of that experience feeling entitled. Instead, I learned that things don't in fact always work out and you don't necessarily get what you want in the least.