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 things to do in your day. There wasn't a single moment in time where the nation changed and became this way; this is simply the gradual development of our free market economy. It's more difficult to accept something intangible such as love, or pride as your greatest achievement than it is to know you have accumulated x amount of dollars. This is because in our economy, we are competitive by nature and the easiest way to gauge how you have done is a benchmark, dollars earned. People will abandon family concerns, their health, and the things that are truly important to them in the pursuit of monetary success simply because society encourages it. Slogans like "Greed is good!" from the 80's stock market drama "Wall Street" embody this societal tenacity, pushing people to battle amongst each other to earn the almighty dollar.
Where can you find happiness and contentment if not in the United States? Kerala. In the small state lying along the south border of India, people make 1/26 that of Americans, they rely on agriculture, and yet they are not envious of America.
