Compared with the world's poor, how do lower-income Americans live?
The world still has abject poverty and disease in many areas, but in America even the lower economic level lives like millionaires compared to the world's poverty-stricken, reflecting the industrialized world's sumptuous lifestyle. This contrast highlights the affluence of the western and industrialized world.
Les explains that while many areas of the world remain in abject poverty and disease, the western and industrialized world—now including a fast-rising Japan and China—enjoys a lifestyle of sumptuousness. He stresses that even America’s lower level on the economic scale lives like millionaires compared to the poverty-stricken of the world. He ties this to the world’s advertising system, which makes people want things whether they need them or can afford them, and to a corporate mentality of profit, stock market gains, and big bank accounts, thinking there is no end to it.