Are Americans Too Spoiled?

Are Americans just too spoiled?
How many cupholders does the car have? Does it have a GPS system? Can this car go offroading? These are just some of the questions that may arise when looking into car shopping in today’s society. You may ask yourself, “why don’t those people ask about mileage?, what about the engine?, can this car run on alternative fuels?” I guess the answers to these questions have been proven by you, the shoppers, over the last 50 or so years.
If there is one thing in particular that the rest of the world is doing better than us when it comes to manufacturing cars, it involves dedication. Companies that were founded and still reside in America, like Ford Motors , General Motors , and Chrysler were built on the principle that America is the number one country in the world in producing goods that can be used all over the world as well. Now, America has lost confidence in the quality of their exports making other industrialized countries feel superior and inspire innovation. Come to think of it these cars we make here are not very advanced when it comes to price. Americans are almost paying as much for their own mass produced cars then the ones we get from overseas. So what makes us, as consumers, want to buy those foreign cars instead of the ones we make right here in America? This brings us back to the spoiled quality of Americans.

“In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.”- Ivan Illich

We as a society don’t have needs we have desires, and the ultimate desire is to “ keep up with the Joneses.” We subconsciously need to be better than other people, or in this case, countries because we have been hit so hard before by depression and recession that we can’t afford to fall behind.