According to Zogby, who tracks this sort of stuff, many more American's are living 'below their means' (if you can believe it) than ever before.
Apparently, according to Zogby, this trend began more than 15 years ago, but gained traction during the past decade of economic turmoil.
So what Zogby fails to mention is that the median income for ALL Americans is less than $50,000. Basically, most Americans dont have a choice. Its either live below your means or go into debt. There isn't any in between, where any substantial numbers actually do make a lot of money (I'm talking at least 6 figures) and are still 'living below their means' by choice at least.
One certainly couldn't tell that here in my little 'neck-o-the-woods' outside Chicago, in a relatively affluent town of 160,000. More and more people are driving Audi's and Hybrid Highlanders (at $50k a pop), and a 'beater car' is something like a 5 year old Camry. There are many towns like this in and around Chicago, so obviously if people are 'living below their means' they have a heck of a lot of 'means' if you get my drift.
Also, according to Zogby, 36% of 'adults' between 18 and 31 are living with their parents. Thats a LOT of free rent and utilities and not much in the way of taxes per se, for those young adults to spend on stuff, or pay off student loans.
My takeaway from all of this is the following:
1) Americans are by and large still profligate spenders. 'Consumerism' or materialism is a bad habit that will die hard here in this country.
2) Those so called 'living below their means' haven't likely lived in ANY other country or culture where their
'living below means' standard of living is 10 to 20x greater spending than a vast majority of the population centers on this planet.
3) Americans are so far removed from what it truly means to be poor, that even the poor here who EASILY get EBT cards, welfare, SS disability (even when they are perfectly well and able to work), live better than the middle classes of 75% of world's nations.
There is as such, no 'new materialism' or spiritual awakening here in the US by any stretch of the imagination, and won't be until the consumer here dies hard, which won't come until our currency collapses, other countries stop buying our debt, and the government becomes too broke to even print money.
This WILL happen at some point. When ? I do not know. But it will happen.
OTIS.