Affluenza: Who’s to Blame?
Affluenza is an epidemic outbreak caused by people’s materialistic, greedy need to buy things, which has resulted to the current struggles that our society is challenged with today (de Graff, Boe, 1998). The Public Broadcasting Service Production website on Affluenza defines this epidemic as:
1. The bloated, sluggish, and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses.
2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste, and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream.
3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth (PBS, 1998).
Affluenza has been affecting the United States for centuries and dates back to the 1600’s with the founders of the New World. Quakers and Puritans, who founded the New World, settled in Massachusetts with a belief that “material instincts would displace God from people’s hearts” and that “any excess wealth was to be shared with the poor” (PBS, 1998).
During the middle......
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