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Shopping might seem like a harmless enough pleasure, but the facts are terrifying. Although we have grown progressively richer since the end of the second world war, levels of personal debt are sky-rocketing. We juggle credit cards, take out loans, and re-mortgage our overpriced houses to shop and shop and shop. And what are we doing with all this stuff? We throw away ever-growing mountains of rubbish. And even though one in seven of us in the West now owns a second home and the average house size is increasing, one of the fastest growing businesses is storage space. And it’s not just our wardrobes which are getting bigge: obesity is the physical expression of consumption gone crazy, and depression and mental illness increasingly manifests itself through shopping addiction. Shopping has filled our free time and impinged on what was once our free space. It has replaced religion, politics and ideology. In the wake of the most terrible terrorist incident on American soil, politicians informed us that shopping was now a patriotic duty. It has become all consuming. This book will be our wake-up call. Written in an accessible, unsanctimonious style by one of the UK’s most distinguished policy makers and political commentators ALL CONSUMING is designed to generate debate and promote action. And it will offer solutions as well as analyzing the problems of turbo-consumerism.
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