Meanwhile, as one newspaper pointed out, there is a relentless increase here in demand for expensive cars built like tanks, for ever larger houses with even more bathrooms than children, and for even more expensive lawnmowers that are priced like cars. We have a housing shortage and smaller family units, and yet the biggest growth in housing demand is for the biggest type of house. This is at a time when we need higher housing density to use our limited land space more efficiently and to minimise journey times to work. This is all about how we are making the choices that prosperity now allows us to make. The difficulty is that extra spending on luxury goods, which confer status, is a self defeating process.
Advertising constantly generates new dissatisfactions.
The organised creation of dissatisfaction through advertising may be necessary for continued economic growth, but it is not necessarily conducive towards the living of a full life. The value system of economics cannot be the value system of life. The aim of any plan for the Nation must be to build a new patriotism in Ireland.