Living Large

Here is an excerpt from the book Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America by Kurt Anderson:

From the beginning of the 1980s through 2007, the share of disposable income that each household spent paying off its mortgage and consumer debt increased by 35 percent. Back in 1982, the average American household saved 11 percent of its disposable income, but then the percentage steadily dropped, to less than 1 percent in 2007.

Not coincidentally, it was during this same period that state-sanctioned and state-run gambling became ubiquitous in America. Until the late 1980s, only Nevada and New Jersey had casinos, but now twelve states do, and forty-eight of the fifty have some form of legalized betting. It's as if we decided that Mardi Gras and Christmas are so much fun we ought to make them year-round ways of life. We started living large literally as well as figuratively. From the beginning to the end of the long boom, the size of the average new American house increased by half, even as the average family became smaller. During the two decades ending 2007, the average new American car got 29 percent heavier, 89 percent more powerful, and 2 percent less efficient. Meanwhile, the average American gained about a pound a year, so that an adult of a given age is now at least twenty pounds heavier than someone of the same age during the 1970s. Back in the late 1970s, 15 percent of Americans were obese; more than a third of us are now.

Now that is "living large". But all good things must come to an end. The savings rate is up, everybody is talking diet, there is a buzz about moving from materialism to spiritualism. My guess is that it will last about another six months, then it will be back to Living La Vida Loca.