Consumerism In American Society

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Today, a large majority of Americans could be considered materialistic. We buy more things then we could ever wish for. Things that we feel will benefit us and improve our happiness. They are either extremely over priced or made disposable. This consumerism society we live in has become a huge problem and has a negative affect on the American society and the American economy. So how does consumerism happen? Let’s say you’re in the market for some new jeans. You already know what style and color you want so now all that’s left to do is go buy them. You have a couple of options to choose from. You can go to a high-end store and pay $50 for a pair of jeans or you could go to a store like Old Navy and pay half that. All of your friends have those high end jeans you’re thinking about. They are always talking about how much they love them and how they own six pairs. You also remember seeing an ad with J-Lo wearing these jeans. So you decide to get that pair of $50 jeans. You just contributed to the consumerism. You could’ve got the same pair of jeans, for a lot less, but you chose to go with the …show more content…
Laurence Shames’ “The More Factor” is the perfect example of how we got into this consumerism lifestyle. He talks about how we believe that there will always be more stuff to buy. “The country is not running out of wealth, drive, savvy, or opportunities. We are not facing imminent ruin… we are running out of more (Shames, 83).” We have changing in way that instead of measuring progress in geographical expansion we measure it in material possessions. We use to see people with 15 acres as successful. Now we see people with the nice cars and expensive clothes as successful. The people with the land may have worked their whole lives for it, but today the guy with the nice car is seen as more successful. Consumerism has put people into debt, because they buy all these new good with out a thought of how much they are
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