In her latest book, The Overspent American , Schor contends that we now live in the most consumer-orientated society in history. Americans spend three to four times as many hours a year shopping as their counterparts in Western European countries. Once a purely utilitarian chore, shopping in America has been elevated to the status of a national obsession. Shopping has literally become a leisure activity in it own right. Going to the mall is a common Friday and Saturday night entertainment, not only for the teens who seem to live in them, but for adults as well.
Malls are everywhere.
That is, the more we spend, the more we go into debt, the more we are dependent on work to pay our bills. Czechoslovakian playwright and politician Vaclav Havel warns us of the spiritual and moral disease engendered by a consumer culture. Consumerism, he says, is a desperate substitute for living. When life becomes reduced to a hunt for consumer goods, freedom becomes trivialized to mean a chance to freely choose which washing machine or refrigerator one wants to buy. Consumer bliss, Havel pointed out, has the effect of diverting people's attention away from the community to the self.