Affluenza
...ne hundred fifty dollar shoes. Children see the commercial and are convinced they have to have them. Once one person has that pair of shoes, others start to feel envious of them, and think it will make him or her cool if they have the same thing. People who don’t have the shoes because they cannot afford them feel left out, and feel that they are not cool because they don’t have the shoes everyone else does. There have been instances where people have been killed because someone has a product others think they have to have. Companies have begun to pay schools for using their product. The majority of schools now have vending machines of some sort in them. Many times companies pay schools to use their products for teaching. This is a form of advertising, and also a way companies undermine parents. Many parents don’t want their children eating certain foods, but the schools make it available to the children, and how is a parent going to know if his or her child is disobeying their rules while the child is in school? Many schools do this form of advertising, especially if they are in a lower income school district and cannot afford what is needed. Channel One gives schools television sets to those schools that use their channel every day. There is now at least two minutes of commercials students see every day at school when watching Channel One. There is more than enough advertising out of school, we don’t need it in schools as well. Another way that advertisers spread Affluenza is because the companies make people think they have to have the bigger and better product. Companies often make one tiny change, usually aesthetically, and advertise the product that it works better because of this change, even though it is just aesthetics, nothing with how the product actually works. Credit card companies also help the spread of Affluenza. Credit card companies offer consumers the choice to buy now and pay later. What a wonderful idea. The consumer buys what he or she wants now, and for an extra charge, he or she doesn’t have to pay for anything until later. Because consumers are given this option, people buy things that they cannot afford. Many people use credit cards because they think they’re getting a great deal on something. “Look that dress is on sale. I can’t really afford it, but I’m not going to find a better deal anywhere else, so I’ll just use my credit card to buy it now.” People who think like this don’t realize how much money they are really spending because of interest. That may look like a good price for the dress, but when you add the interest you’re going to have to pay, you’re paying more for the dress than if you had bought it at regular price. It’s amazing how much money people spend in interest yearly. The number has skyrocketed from even just a few years ago. Many consumers take credit card debt to an extreme. They have more than one card, and they max them all out buying things they don’t need, and cannot afford. Americans believe they will have the money to spend because of how much time is spent working. Working so much also helps in the spread of Affluenza. Americans now work more hours than people in any other industrialized country, even Japan. The reason a person works so many hours is because he or she believe they have to in order to keep up with everyone else in the way of spending. Americans now spend more time at work than with their families. The saddest part of this is that the majority of American workers get paid over fifty percent less than the people at the top at their companies, who are the ones who are spending money frivolously because they have it. There are people who work two jobs who don’t have to. They do because they feel pressured to buy bigger and better things. The amount of leisure time Americans have is decreasing at a rapid pace. People in other countries have a lot more free time than Americans because they work less hours every week, and take vacations, whereas Americans rarely take vacations and are c...