Most people in the US don’t even stop to think of why they are working so hard. You are considered to be living in poverty in the US if you don’t have a car, a microwave, and a TV. (I have none of those things where I live in Mexico.) The crazier thing is that in the US, most of the products being consumed are made in other places in the world. And once we buy things, that’s not enough. We have a house, but then we need a bigger house. We have clothes, but we need new ones. Credit card companies have done a lot to screw up people’s lives. People don’t have the money to buy something, and so they “put it on the card.” They don’t stop to think about how they are spending much more than the item is worth with the interest the card is charging them. So many people in the Western world have huge amounts of credit card debt for items that they didn’t need in the first place. In other countries, if people don’t have the money for an item, they just don’t buy it. Period.