Are You Suffering From Affluenza?
by Alexander Green
excerpt...
In his 1997 film Affluenza, producer John de Graaf claims there is a virus loose in society that threatens our wallets, our friendships, our families, our communities, and our environment.
Each year it costs us hundreds of billions of dollars, wastes our precious time, ruins our health and adversely affects our quality of life.
What is affluenza, exactly?
De Graaf defines it as "a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more."
He argues that too many of us are working ourselves to death to accumulate an endless array of goods and services we don't really need.
This creates stress. Stress, in turn, creates health problems, including headaches, stomachaches, ulcers, depression, even heart attacks.
Medical research shows that people in industrial nations lose more years from disability and premature death due to stress-related illnesses than other ailments.
Affluenza drives up healthcare costs, tears at the fabric of families, and shortens our stay on the right side of the daisies.
Before you mistake me for the national scold, however, let me make a couple of confessions.
First off, I'm a libertarian. I realize that personal consumption - roughly two-thirds of all economic activity - drives the economy. Moreover, if someone really wants to devote his life to accumulating more, more, more, that's his right.
As John Maynard Keynes put it, "It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens."

(Personally, though, I've never met anyone who obtained lasting satisfaction with a Visa or MasterCard.)

Secondly, I'm not immune to the occasional bout of affluenza myself.
I rarely pass a bookstore or record shop, for example, without poking my head inside. And whenever I leave Barnes & Noble, the clerk at the register always asks the same thing:
"Would you like us to double-bag that for you?"

We all have to consume to survive, of course. But Madison Avenue is right there beside us, aiding us, abetting us... giving us a not-so-subtle push.
Marketers want to convince us that our lives would be so much better if we would only just drive this car, drink this light beer, use this antiwrinkle cream or fly these friendly skies.
Every day we are bombarded: billboards, Internet banners, TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads. Go to a busy public beach and single-engine planes criss-cross the sky trailing banners, "Joe's Crab Shack: All You Can Eat $17.99" or "2-for-1 Drinks All Day at Bennigan's."
Advertisers are getting more sophisticated, too. The new science of neuromarketing is designed to help retailers unlock the subconscious thoughts, feelings and desires that drive our purchasing decisions.
Marketers now strive to create products that actually stimulate the production of dopamine.
Today psychologists routinely talk about "retail therapy," where consumers shop just to get a short-term high to ward off boredom or the blues.continues..........

As Oscar Wilde said, "The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is."
https://www.spiritualwealth.com/Archives/2008/20081114.html

Alexander Green is the Investment Director of The Oxford Club and Chairman of Investment U, a free, internet-based research service with over 350,000 readers. (The Oxford Club's Communique, whose portfolio he directs, is ranked third in the nation for risk-adjusted returns over the past five years by the independent Hulbert Financial Digest.) Alex is also the author of The New York Times bestselling book, "The Gone Fishin' Portfoli Get Wise, Get Wealthy... and Get On With Your Life." He's been featured on "The O'Reilly Factor," and has been profiled by Forbes, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, CNBC, and Marketwatch.com, among others. He lives in central Florida with his wife Karen and their children, Hannah and David.