by Umair Haque via http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/05/the_opulence_bubble.html Here's a question: What if, just maybe, it's our way of life itself that's a bubble? To illustrate why I ask, consider this set of questions: How's your house price doing? Where would your 401K be, if central banks withdrew life support for banks? How steep is a college education this year (hint: on average, 10-15% more than last year)? How are weekly grocery and gas prices doing? Where are commodity prices — not to mention gold — headed? Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble: these days, it seems, everywhere you look, there's a bubble inflating — or popping. I believe the mini-bubbles above are different ripples in what might call the surface of a superbubble: an opulence bubble. Here's what I mean by opulence bubble: our conception of the good life, as I've discussed with you , has been centered on what I call hedonic opulence — having more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now. Bu...
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