The article utterly sucks. It's essentially a clickbaity rendition of the banal rant about American consumerism.

The arguments are poorly constructed, even when there is a point to be made. The sentence "Americans haven't always acted like this. We've entered an age of overabundance." is followed by a a graph showing that Americans consumed more than major European countries at least since 1990. (And I don't think that graph is purchasing power parity adjusted)

Apart from the confusing graph, most of the numbers in the article don't have a corresponding European version for comparison.

What has happened to the Manhattan Institute? I kinda thought their senior fellows were better than this.

I've thought a lot lately about how American's don't have the benefit of living somewhere that has been continuously inhabited (by non-nomadic people) for thousands of years. I can't go have fun in a local town center because I literally have no local town center. Living in the middle of suburbia as a youngster means everything within walking/driving distance is paved and closed by 9:00pm. There isn't much to do except spend time inside and to make it enjoyable we buy things to spend time with.

I would have loved to live European-ish but I wish it was more practical than it seems.

The data should also take into account average income or something similar. A quick search in Wikipiedia[1] shows that average wage in the USA is $65k, and the UK is $47k, a ratio of ~1.38. Before the pandemic, the consumption per capita ratio for these 2 countries was ~1.33. Basically, people who earn more tend to spend more but not disproportionately so. So the actual trend is not as extreme as that plot makes it out to be.

This is not to say that there isn't an underlying problem.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

That title is a non-starter for so many Americans. Any such shifts need to be sold without reference to foreign lands.

I largely agree with the author, but why isn't the ire directed at the companies that offshores everything in the first place? We'd be in a much better position if we hadn't outsourced the manufacturing of all our most most needed items to china I'm the past 30 years

One of the wonderful things about America is that anyone is free to up and move to Europe whenever they want.