The following is an exerpt from an old English paper I found...when I read it, I laughed. Oh gosh...

Consuming America

Why is it that we find families splitting, relationships breaking, and occupations disintegrating? What makes this modern world economy and structural breakdown so different from the decades with which our ancestors were so familiar? The logical answer to these vague questions is, “You name it.” Try to explain the phenomenon to which we all are indebted-it could take hours…days or weeks possibly. No longer are we a picture of Maybury, spending a dime on an afternoon snack and sitting around the dinner table discussing our days’ work. We have grown hungry for food that feeds our eyes: clothes, fine dinners, expensive vehicles, homes, and toys- it all contributes to a fascination which has nurtured our aesthetic obesity. Where has our satisfaction gone…or has satisfaction ever found a place in the American home? Interview your grandmother and you might be shocked at what you hear. Where she found her satisfaction in the simple pleasures of the day, today’s individual can not acquire enough...
...The problem-solution scenario of consumer spending presents itself as a cycle, unrelenting and absent of sense. The more we make, the more we spend; the more we spend the less we have; and the less we have the more we buy- in order to console our depression.