"When I was growing up in Dallas, even the wealthiest families in town often drove average, American-made cars. Yes, teenagers were as fashion-conscious as today, but keeping up with the Joneses didn't cost an arm or an iPod...As a kid, I don’t recall a single family (including my own) that replaced its kitchen or bathroom counters."

True of Greensboro in my youth, too.

Now kitchen remodeling is a competitive sport, or at least it was until recently. 

Comments

[Joe Killian]

I'm wondering if some of these god-awful "spend-way-too-much-on/remodel and then flip" your house shows beloved of my significant other are finally going to die now that money-waste porn seems tacky (tackier?).

[Patrick]

Still, spare me the faux romantic yearning for dirt floors and tin cups. I suspect I've seen circumstances closer to those than the author of the linked comment has, and there was nothing romantic or ennobling about it. It felt like what it was: deprivation. Also, if you're going to run an entire economy on consumerism, the upper class, with its ironic traditions of shabby nobility, should be circumspect about tamping down the material aspirations of the rest of society.

[Ed Cone]

"...if you're going to run an entire economy on consumerism..." Let's not do that anymore. Bad for the economy and the spirit.