I think it is a well written essay. The only question I have is whether you had sufficient time to finish your essay or not.
Also for someone who's following this thread, you may want to know more about alternatives to the already cogent arguments presented above.
Those could be:
1) The author assumes that unemployment and consumer fears, and purchase of luxury items happen in the same social strata. There isn't enough market data to establish this causal relationship.
2) The author assumes that luxury goods are nonessential goods. In professions such as competitive gaming, possession of a gaming computer that is inordinately expensive and powered by the best available hardware on the market is a must to even survive the competition. Hence it is not possible to define what is essential and what is not by providing a simple definition.
