From Hummers to Smart cars? No way.
Way. And in Las Vegas, for crying out loud.
[Please read Part 2 for context.]
“This kind of downsizing represents a dramatic shift for a culture that has known little but steady progress for the past 50 years.” (Living On Less, MacLean’s magazine, Nov. 2008)
The shift toward a smaller lifestyle is dramatic because a lot of people have dramatically less money, but may also be permanent because our brains are finally, after 50 (to 65) years of idleness, more fully engaged.
The article says, “Until recently, each generation since the Second World War was richer than the last. Houses have gone from simple two-bedrooms in the burgeoning suburbs of the ‘50s to the McMansions of the ‘90s. Everything from cars to food went “supersized” - and along the way so did waistlines.”
But this most recent recession has made more people (wait for it) ... think.
Isn’t it about time?
More of us now know that “the bigger is better mentality (that) was bred in the bone of the baby boomer generation” has lead to our undoing.
More now realize how hard an Age of Excess - bigger homes, closets, cars, waistlines, debt loads - can come back to bite us.
Pain hurts. And teaches.
***
Will we ever recover?
Can we enjoy the new Age of Austerity?
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