One major theme in America is individualism, the America culture is very one minded and focused on the self. If not taken to an extreme, this mindset isn’t all bad, it simply means that we as a collective care for ourselves and those closest to us first rather than the greater good then ourselves and those we care about second. This mindset is what has allowed America to be the land where dreams can come true, its from this mindset that people believe they can be whatever they want to be and that’s a significant unique character trait of America. However, from this individualistic mindset also comes the ideas of materialism and consumerism which leads to another popular theme in American culture, the theme of individualistic wealth. The theme of individualistic wealth derived from materialism and consumerism thus ties into one of the major tenets of economics, which is the issue of scarcity.
Economics is run by people acting in self-interest to acquire what they wish for; this is essentially what keeps the free market going. However, in its simplicity this sounds an awful lot like the individualistic American culture, though regarding our culture, to acquire what it usually wants (which is usually wealth) one must acquire material goods which also ties into the materialistic theme of American Culture. This idea leads us to the first principle of economics which is scarcity. By definition, according to the textbook Basic Economics, it is the idea that “although human wants are unlimited, our means for satisfying them are limited. We must make choices as how to use our scarce means to accomplish the ends we desire most” (pg. 64). I believe it is our individualist culture which prides itself on materialism and consumerism that is greatly furthering the scarcity problem in such a way that is unnecessary. One simply cannot deny that there is a scarcity problem, the wants of humans are simply too great to always have enough resources to provide for those wants. To compensate we have simply begun putting more goods into the market in effort to not only solve the scarcity problem but to also feed the ideas of materialism and consumerism. However, putting more goods into the market will not solve the scarcity problem, this is because the problem is not rooted in a shortage of goods for the free market but is rooted in the resources needed to allocate those goods. We have only managed to embed the ideas of materialism and consumerism further into our culture and make the scarcity problem worse.
Now, because of this “solution” there are more goods in the market than before which means more resources are needed to create and distribute those goods. Along with that, we have made materialism and consumerism both toxic traits of American culture. Instead of being something that was a part of out lives it now dominates it, especially for those in prominent social positions. This was never supposed to be how humanity operated, God instructed us to give what we had to the poor and rely on him for our material needs. He created man, who created trade and the marketplace and overall, the entire economy, but from it He wants us to serve him. Though creating toxic ideas out of materialism and consumerism that dominate our culture and blinds us of what is right and wrong is not serving Him in the way He instructed us to. In trying to solve the scarcity problem we have only made materialism and consumerism the principles that dominate our lives and lead us down paths of irreparable damage as a culture.