Are we satiated with consumer goods?

How much stuff is enough? One big change we've been discussing is people increasingly have most of the material possessions they want or need. Even the poorest households in the US today have flatscreen TVs, refrigerators, cars, or air-conditioning.

Clothing is not as much of a social indicator as it once was. Sure, it still costs a fortune to keep up with haute couture. But look around a midtown street and it is hard to tell billionaires from off duty baristas, at least from a distance. Everyone tends to wear jeans and t-shirt at the weekend in any case. The range and quality and bargains of clothing in an average city are astounding.

Food is available in ever increasing quality and variety, and it is an ever smaller proportion of people's incomes.

Shelter certainly costs us a huge amount. But actual physical shelter is readily available, even if it is in the exurbs. We pay more for proximity to jobs or good schools or cultural excitement. No doubt you can always imagine a bigger house in a better location, all the way up to a palace. But not even Louis XIV's Versailles had the central heating, a/c and general comfort of an average modern house. Phillip II built the vast gloomy Escorial Palace, but effectively lived in a set of rooms about the same size as my New York apartment.

Basic needs are, as Keynes imagined 80 years ago, more or less satiated in the US. We still seek quality improvements in those basic needs. But quality frequently improves without increases in cost. In areas like Computers, power soars while prices plunge.

G and I decided a while back that we'd increasingly spend more money on experiences - more on travel, good food, culture, stimulation. In this I think we follow a broader trend. But the demand for experiences, and the kind of social arrangements which optimize them, may be very different from one devoted to maximizing material possessions.

The agricultural revolution transformed society ten thousand years ago. The industrial revolution transformed society two hundred years ago. And now another profound change is transforming society and the nature of the economy again. We talk about the "knowledge society" or "postindustrial society" or "postmodernity", sure. But we haven't begun to really change our habits of thought and wider economic ideas. We haven't figured out yet what the latest revolution means.