The United States consumes an unnecessary amount of resources in contrast to the rest of the world. Luxuries and surplus product saturate the market and fill the homes of families, yet people are not more content as a result of their material accumulations.
Affluenza is a term used to describe the behavior of the wealthy, using the metaphor of a virus infecting someone to describe how wealth has infected the United States. The PBS program which confronts this, named Affluenza, looks at how over time the nation has put more time towards being more productive, and accomplishes its direct goal but fails to gain from it. Despite increased income, larger homes, and new technology people are less satisfied than they were 40 years ago. This is due to the fact that people have more stress today due to the faster pace of life, and the myriad of working conditions people must deal with. For every moment of time a new device saves you, there are two more
Industrialization is the father of materialism, offering mass production and harvesting. Yet, instead of saving the consumer money because of the machines increased efficiency and lower man power requirements, instead the consumer must pay more. Corporations use their political ties and power to acquire public funding for projects that benefit them solely. Bernard Taper’s article “The Bittersweet Harvest” documents this practice on college campuses. The research departments, specifically the University of California's, do research on agrichemicals and new machinery at minimal cost to the corporation. These machines are putting men and women out of jobs, they are using the resources paid for by the public, and not giving anything in addition to their retail product back to society.
Industrialization, technology, and wealth are supposed to bring benefits to society, yet they seem to be just as likely to make a negative impact. Conversely
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