Americans' Excessive Consumption

Paper Summary:

The paper explores both "Living It Up: America's Love Affair With Luxury", by James B. Twitchell, and "American Mania: When More is Not Enough", by Peter C. Whybrow, that examine America's obsession with luxury goods and look at reasons why it is so common for people to desire these goods. The paper examines "Living It Up"'s five assumptions about consumerism in the United States and "American Mania's" main argument that Americans are genetically prone to over consumption because they come from a long line of restless people. The paper notes that these two ideologies agree with each other in the way that they both place most of the blame on American society for this problem. The paper identifies bias in both texts and then presents a personal viewpoint that is similar to that of Twitchell.

From the Paper:

"Living It Up is based on five assumptions about consumerism in the United States and it shows that human beings have an inherent desire to constantly attain more things, even when they are things that they do not need. Human beings, and those in western society in particular, are not happy with only having the things that they need to survive, but have developed a need on luxury goods in order to make them happy. The feeling that these people get when they attain a new product is very pleasurable, which leads to them wanting to acquire another new product. This book also looks at the effect that advertising has on these people, as it is what brings these products into the public eye in the first place."

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