 What is the significance of including all the costs and price tags in the article?
Filling out the room are other editors, publicists, and writers from these magazines and GQ and House & Garden and so on. S.I. "Si" Newhouse Jr. and his younger brother, Donald, control Advance Publications, one of America's largest privately held companies. Donald tends to Advance's hugely profitable newspaper, radio, and TV holdings. The expense-account lunch is a hallowed journalistic tradition. (Could be worse for the assistant: She could be forced to pick up her boss's birth-control pills, or her boss's pet from the vet, or presents for her boss's children--regular duties for Condé Nast underlings.) If you spend $10 or less on lunch, and claim you were working, Si pays.
 To show the carelessness for money demonstrated by the New York elite.
 To show the carelessness for money demonstrated by the New York elite.  To eventually calculate and justify the net worth of people like Si.  To demonstrate how such large sums of money are spent so generously.  To show how people like Si keep track of their budget.