Oliver Bateman Does the WorkVerified account

Thinking about how in the late 90s it was hip to criticize "consumerism", as if the excesses of capitalism could be straightforwardly pinned on a cultural disposition to avarice. Many suburban kids, myself included, got to feel counter-cultural simply by echoing this.

Looking back, this dovetails rather eerily with the decline in my generation's living standards compared to our parents'. All that anti-consumerist noise was almost too perfect a rhetorical precursor to the total collapse of economic security for most of us.