Word: riches
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are at least two answers to this question. One is that Americans with money are the kids in the global candy store; they want everything, and they buy everything, laying waste to the environment and helping enact political policies that help the rich get even richer. In this model, rich Americans will never give up their God-given right to buy a hulking new six-burner range even if they never cook...
Another answer - one recently featured on TIME's cover - is that because this recession is so serious, everything after it could change. The rich might stop being so greedy, and some high-minded form of anticonsumerism might flourish. (See the best business deals...
Social psychologists study this sort of question for a living, and unfortunately for the idealists, academic research shows that greed will never die and excess will never end. In fact, as the recession deepens - and as the rich hear more and more stories of once secure Americans having to forgo everything from new clothes to basic health care - the wealthy will almost certainly start to spend again, and with renewed avidity. Why? Not because the rich are greedy but because they are human...
...implication is that when Americans who are still fully employed really start to empathize with the pain of those who are struggling, they will feel weaker, and they will go out and start spending. Right now, fear may be overwhelming the empathy-glucose response. But at some point, the rich will give in and open their wallets again - not because they are especially greedy, but because they vicariously feel the pain of going without...
...RICH HISTORY...