“Affluenza’s costs and consequences are immense, though often concealed. Untreated, the disease can cause permanent discontent. Were you to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition might be something like the following: affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more…
In our view, the affluenza epidemic is rooted in the obsessive, almost religious quest for economic expansion that has become the core principle of what is called the American dream. It is rooted in the fact that the supreme measure of national progress is that quarterly ring of the cash register called the gross domestic product. It’s rooted in the idea that every generation will be materially wealthier than its predecessor and that, somehow, each of us can pursue that single-minded end without damaging the countless other things we hold dear.
It doesn’t work that way…If we don’t begin to reject our culture’s incessant demands to “buy now” we will “lay later” in ways we can scarcely imagine.”
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas Naylor and David Horsey, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005) 2-3.