CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Melissa Greenwood sees it every day at her high school -- the hyper-focus on designer labels, the must-have trendy cell phones, the classmates driving SUVs.
You could say it's just teens being teens. But new polls show that the obsession with material things is growing -- and that being rich is more important to today's young people than in the past.
UCLA's annual survey of college freshman, released last Friday, found that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in 2006 thought it was essential or very important to be "very well-off financially." That compares with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966, the first year the survey was done.
Another recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that about 80 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds in this country see getting rich as a top life goal for their generation.
...
Tim Barello, a 24-year-old New Yorker, agrees that his generation has gotten caught up in wanting "more and more and more."
Having grown up on Long Island's wealthy North Shore, he thought he'd arrived when he got a job as a publicist and was able to rent an apartment in an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan.
"To be completely honest," he says, "I don't even appreciate everything I have sometimes.
"Yes, I have a nice apartment, a great job, a great degree, great clothing. But I feel empty inside rather often."
[Source]
Blech.
How embarrassing. A generation full of condiments and no food...
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5 comments:
These youngsters just need to study the Talmud. Then they would know "more property means more worry".
yes. because study of the Talmud has done so much to keep Jews from being materialistic and shallow.
To be fair, Miri, J.P. said that they would "know" this teaching; not necessarily that they'd live by it. But it would be interesting to see, if such a thing could be done, an empirical study contrasting the materialism and shallowness of Talmud learners with those who never looked into the Talmud.
Alex,
"an empirical study contrasting the materialism and shallowness of Talmud learners with those who never looked into the Talmud."
I'm sure the results would be similar as those groups of people who study the Koran or go to Bible studies, etc. Or even of those groups who seriously study any intellectual subject matter. The ethic of serious study, I believe, tends to undermine the soft-living loved by materialistic hedonism.
"Or even of those groups who seriously study any intellectual subject matter."
Even lawyers?
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