'Can we — the people who have bought so much already — really keep buying more?'

Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic, California

(Image credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

published 30 April 2024

'Will Americans ever get sick of cheap junk?'

Amanda Mull in The Atlantic

America's closets and junk drawers "overfloweth," says Amanda Mull. "Maybe, one day, buying cheap stuff as a form of entertainment will run afoul" of a shared awareness that rampant consumerism is hurting our stressed planet. "People might begin to feel ashamed" about buying things they don't "really want as a salve for stress or boredom." But if we're waiting for "wastefulness to become uncool" we appear to have a long way to go before reaching "peak stuff."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.