You understand that, nothing. But on closer inspection they look more like evidence of humans' social nature. We are beings who nced to belong. In the consumer society, that need to be valued and respected by others is acted out through consumption. Thus individual happiness is more a func tion of rising consumption that of high consumption as such.
People measure their current material comforts against the benchmark set in their own childhood.
So each generation needs more than the previous did to be satisfied. Over a few generations, this process can redefine prosperity as poverty. The ghettos of the United States and Europe have things such as televisions that would have awed the richest neighbourhoods of centuries past, but that does not diminish the scorn the consumer class heaps on slum dwellers, nor the bitterness belt by the modernised poor. The child whose parents have not purchased the latest video game feels ashamed to invite friends home. Teenagers without an automobile do not feel equal to their peers.