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• In 2000, the average American had 5 credit cards and $7564 in credit card debt.
• Every year more than a million people file for bankruptcy.
• More people file for bankruptcy than graduate from college.
• Americans spend nearly seven times as much time shopping as they do playing with their kids.
• Shopping is the favorite activity of 93% of teenage girls.
• The national savings rate is often below zero.
• Most American children see over a million commercials before the age of twenty.

(Source: Affluenza, De Graaf)

“As volume of consumption goods increases, requirements for the care and maintenance of these goods also tends to increase; we get bigger houses to clean, a car to wash, a boat to put up for the winter, a television set to repair, and have to make more decisions on spending.”
-Swedish economist Staffan Linder, 1970