Support or refute ONE of the major arguments in Affluenza - Essay Example

ybe an above ground pool has been co-opted by the advertising industry to become the dream of living at a level of status beyond the means of Americans. The basic ideal of living within your means has become a dirty word in America; today’s Americans are incessantly instructed to live the life they see advertised around them. Unfortunately, advertising the reality of paying for things with the money you have is not conducive to corporate profits. Advertising is geared toward sending people into debt in order to attain a lifestyle they have been coerced into confusing with normality when in fact that advertising is selling a dream that more of than not turns into a nightmare from the escape is increasingly bankruptcy or losing everything one owns.

It is impossible to escape the power of advertisements in America today because it literally exists everywhere. In addition to the bombardment of commercials on TV, the billboards that litter the path toward anywhere a person drives, the five minutes of commercials between songs on the radio and the inserts dropping into one’s lap from magazines, it has also become fashionable to attached ads over even the urinals inside public restrooms. Go to a sporting event and the stadium is not only decorated with advertisements all around, but the giant screen that shows the action will be trying to get attendees to buy things.

Even the last bastion of commercial-free entertainment has been ruined by the introduction of large-scale commercials; going to see a movie inside a theater used to be a respite from commercials, but today a move that is advertised as starting as noon won’t actually begin playing until 12:20 after the commercials that precede the movie trailers are added. Advertising is insidious in America; it is something that is quite literally inescapable (Hood 121). The American economy used to be constructed around production, but today is reliant upon consumption.

Retailing has replaced manufacturing