Growing Materialism in America
In the United States, there is a growing trend of increasing materialism in order to pursue the "good life." Research shows that recent generations are focusing more on money, image, and fame than ever before - especially when compared to the generations of Baby Boomers and Generation X.
In one survey, 1 in 14 Americans would murder someone for 3 million dollars and 65% of respondents said they would spend a year on a deserted island to earn $1 million.
A survey done by the University of California and the American Council on Education on a quarter of a million new college students found that their main reason for attending college was to gain material wealth. From the 1970s to the late 1990s, the percentage of students who stated that their main reason for going to college was to develop a meaningful life philosophy dropped from more than 80% to about 40%, while the purpose of obtaining financial gain rose from about 40% to more than 75%.
Read more about this topic: Economic Materialism
Famous quotes containing the words growing, materialism and/or america:
“A new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,—the aristocracy of hidden firearms.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)