Acute economic crisis may cure the nation’s chronic materialism | L.A. Times

It’s a stat we hear time and again: Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. It was the reason President Bush famously (or infamously) urged Americans shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to keep shopping and “get down to Disney World in Florida.”

Take that, Osama!

“Our whole economy is designed to convince people that they want more,” said David Colander, an economics professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. “Nobody is asking the big question: How much of a consumer society do we really want to be?”

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