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Luxury Fever

Luxury Fever PDF Author: Robert H. Frank
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743223403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
A new luxury fever has America in its grip. Independent of stock prices, recessions, and inflation rates, the past two decades have witnessed a spectacular and uninterrupted rise in luxury consumption. Ordinary, functional goods are no longer acceptable. Our cars have gotten larger, heavier, and far more expensive. Mansions larger than 30,000 square feet no longer seem extravagant. Wristwatches for the super-rich cost tens of thousands of dollars. We are living in an era of excess. Consider: The average house built in the United States today is nearly twice as large as its counterpart from the 1950s. Even as houses have gotten more expensive and farther from the workplace, there has been a sharp increase in second-home ownership. The average price of an automobile sold in the United States now exceeds $22,000, up more than 75 percent from a decade ago. Total U.S. spending on luxury goods increased 21 percent between 1995 and 1996 (typical of recent years), while overall merchandise sales increased only 5 percent. Robert Frank caused a national debate in 1995 when he and co-author Philip Cook described the poisonous spread of "winner-take-all" markets. Now he takes a thought-provoking look at the flip side of spreading inequality: as the super-rich set the pace, everyone else spends furiously in a competitive echo of wastefulness. The costs are enormous: We spend more time at work, leaving less time for family and friends, less time for exercise. Most of us have been forced to save less and spend and borrow much more. The annual rate at which American families file for personal bankruptcy has grown to one in seventy. Budgetary pressures have reduced our willingness to fund even essential public services: Our food and water are increasingly contaminated. Potholes proliferate, and traffic delays double every ten years. Frank offers the first comprehensive and accessible summary of scientific evidence that our spending choices are not making us as happy and healthy as they could. Furthermore, he argues that human frailty is not at fault. The good news is that we can do something about it. We can make it harder for the super-rich to overspend, and capture our own competitive energy for the public good. Luxury Fever boldly offers a way to curb the excess and restore the true value of money.

Luxury Fever

Luxury Fever PDF Author: Robert H. Frank
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743223403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
A new luxury fever has America in its grip. Independent of stock prices, recessions, and inflation rates, the past two decades have witnessed a spectacular and uninterrupted rise in luxury consumption. Ordinary, functional goods are no longer acceptable. Our cars have gotten larger, heavier, and far more expensive. Mansions larger than 30,000 square feet no longer seem extravagant. Wristwatches for the super-rich cost tens of thousands of dollars. We are living in an era of excess. Consider: The average house built in the United States today is nearly twice as large as its counterpart from the 1950s. Even as houses have gotten more expensive and farther from the workplace, there has been a sharp increase in second-home ownership. The average price of an automobile sold in the United States now exceeds $22,000, up more than 75 percent from a decade ago. Total U.S. spending on luxury goods increased 21 percent between 1995 and 1996 (typical of recent years), while overall merchandise sales increased only 5 percent. Robert Frank caused a national debate in 1995 when he and co-author Philip Cook described the poisonous spread of "winner-take-all" markets. Now he takes a thought-provoking look at the flip side of spreading inequality: as the super-rich set the pace, everyone else spends furiously in a competitive echo of wastefulness. The costs are enormous: We spend more time at work, leaving less time for family and friends, less time for exercise. Most of us have been forced to save less and spend and borrow much more. The annual rate at which American families file for personal bankruptcy has grown to one in seventy. Budgetary pressures have reduced our willingness to fund even essential public services: Our food and water are increasingly contaminated. Potholes proliferate, and traffic delays double every ten years. Frank offers the first comprehensive and accessible summary of scientific evidence that our spending choices are not making us as happy and healthy as they could. Furthermore, he argues that human frailty is not at fault. The good news is that we can do something about it. We can make it harder for the super-rich to overspend, and capture our own competitive energy for the public good. Luxury Fever boldly offers a way to curb the excess and restore the true value of money.

Progress or Collapse

Progress or Collapse PDF Author: Roberto De Vogli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135102910
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Human progress is heading toward collapse. There are converging ecological crises looming on the horizon: climate change, peak oil, water shortages, fish depletion and food scarcities. The world is on a collision course against the limits of the ecosystem. Modern societies are consuming, polluting and growing as if there is no tomorrow. Indeed, there may not be one. In Progress or Collapse, Roberto De Vogli guides us through the multiple converging global crises of economic progress. He explores the connections between the environmental crisis and the psychological, social, cultural, political and economic emergencies affecting modern societies. It is not a coincidence, the author argues, that global ecological destruction is occurring in tandem with other crises: rising mental disorders, mindless consumerism, rampant conformism, status competition, civic disengagement, startling social inequalities, global financial instability, and widespread political impasse. In this hard-hitting analysis, Roberto De Vogli identifies the root cause of all these symptoms of societal breakdown: neoliberalism, defined as market greed. He argues that in recent decades, modern societies have been dominated by a suicidal economic doctrine based on two articles of faith: the greed creed and the market God. The greed creed states that people are nothing but selfish profiteers in a perpetual search for status and wealth. The market God is the belief that all societal and human affairs are best regulated as market exchanges. What is to be done? Can we stop progress toward collapse? Given the current distribution of power and wealth, and the state of psychological and political inertia in which we are trapped, our chances of redefining progress around alternative values and embracing a new philosophy of life are slim. Yet, the history of human emancipation has often been shaped by giant leaps forward. In the past, civic struggles have overcome "the limits of the possible". Whether this will happen again in the future is the central question of our time. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ecology, psychology, public health, epidemiology, human development, political philosophy, economics, sociology and politics.

The New Conspirators

The New Conspirators PDF Author: Tom Sine
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830877290
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed," Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, "nothing will be impossible for you." That sounds good, but does it work in a world where seeds are genetically altered by an impatient few and hard to come by for countless others? In a world where the gulf between the very rich and the profoundly poor is constantly growing, can a mustard-seed faith make any difference? And can such a little bit of faith be sustained in a world whose future is so uncertain on so many fronts? Tom Sine says yes, and he has the audacity to try to prove it in his latest book. In The New Conspirators Tom surveys the landscape of creative Christianity, where streams of renewal are flowing freely from diverse sources: The emerging church Contemporary monastic movements The missional church The mosaic movement Individuals and communities of faith are coalescing in, and drawing energy from, these four streams to retrofit the church as it leads, serves and gives witness to the kingdom of God in the turbulent times facing us. Read the book and you'll want to-and be prepared to-join God's conspiracy to create a better future.

The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God

The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God PDF Author: Donald Juel
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664227395
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Among his many contributions to New Testament studies, Donald Juel was perhaps best known for his treatment of the ending of Mark's Gospel. He saw the open-endedness of Mark as powerfully unsettling for the reader who desires to tame and predict God's actions. In this series of essays, edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Patrick Miller, theologians begin with Juel's own work and reflect on the "unsettling" in the context of their own work.

Democratic Distributive Justice

Democratic Distributive Justice PDF Author: Ross Zucker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521533553
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Explains how democratic countries with market systems should deal with high levels of income-inequality.

America Beyond Capitalism

America Beyond Capitalism PDF Author: Gar Alperovitz
Publisher: Democracy Collaborative Pres
ISBN: 0984785701
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
America Beyond Capitalism is a book whose time has come. Gar Alperovitz's expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society. Unlike many books that reserve a few pages of a concluding chapter to offer generalized, tentative solutions, Alperovitz marshals years of research into emerging "new economy" strategies to present a comprehensive picture of practical bottom-up efforts currently underway in thousands of communities across the United States. All democratize wealth and empower communities, not corporations: worker-ownership, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises, along with many supporting municipal, state and longer term federal strategies as well. America Beyond Capitalism is a call to arms, an eminently practical roadmap for laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to sustain the great American values of equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.

The Creation and Destruction of Value

The Creation and Destruction of Value PDF Author: Harold James
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674264703
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Harold James examines the vulnerability and fragility of processes of globalization, both historically and in the present. This book applies lessons from past breakdowns of globalization—above all in the Great Depression—to show how financial crises provoke backlashes against global integration: against the mobility of capital or goods, but also against flows of migration. By a parallel examination of the financial panics of 1929 and 1931 as well as that of 2008, he shows how banking and monetary collapses suddenly and radically alter the rules of engagement for every other type of economic activity. Increased calls for state action in countercyclical fiscal policy bring demands for trade protection. In the open economy of the twenty-first century, such calls are only viable in very large states—probably only in the United States and China. By contrast, in smaller countries demand trickles out of the national container, creating jobs in other countries. The international community is thus paralyzed, and international institutions are challenged by conflicts of interest. The book shows the looming psychological and material consequences of an interconnected world for people and the institutions they create.

The Anatomy of Consumerism

The Anatomy of Consumerism PDF Author: H. RamHormozi
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1525545949
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Book Description
The Anatomy of Consumerism is a story of greed and obsession and consumption. Of waste and environmental degradation. Of destruction and despair. It is the story of being human. In this earnest account of a serious problem in which we are all implicated, we come to terms with our collective obsession with material consumption. The Anatomy of Consumerism tracks this consumption from the Industrial Revolution, through a ravenous stretch of excessive production and acquisition, all the way to our digital present—a period during which we overconsume as a matter of course and visit irreparable damage on our natural environment as a result. It is no wonder the consequences of human greed fester so hotly in debate among economists, social scientists, and environmentalists. The Anatomy of Consumerism wades into this debate’s center.

118 Theories of Design[ing]

118 Theories of Design[ing] PDF Author: Paul A. Rodgers
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648891586
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Theories normally seek to explain something. 118 Theories of Design[ing] asks us to question those explanations. By focusing on a broad range of somewhat overlooked and undervalued essays, papers, book articles, words, terms, authors and phenomena that swirl around design[ing], the reader is encouraged to read, reflect and question everything. This original book will appeal to a global market of university faculty heads and deans, museum directors, design educators, design researchers, key design practitioners, publishers, members of the design media, and undergraduate, postgraduate and post-doctoral students of design.

Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism

Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism PDF Author: Michael Volgger
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1838670726
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Combining ideas of sustainable development, strategic marketing and branding with space design and architecture, this volume offers contemporary perspectives on the development and impact of 'atmospheric quality' in tourism and hospitality service situations. Topics discussed include: silent airports, ambient odours and, co-created atmospheres.