https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/insights/report-survey/reti...
The only reasonable conclusion is "are you living paycheck to paycheck" is a useless survey question.
I don't know how often this actually happens, but it certainly not an unreasonable conclusion.
Hmm... What do I wanna do more? Keep up with the Joneses, or flip the bird to my boss? Hmm...
One of the central evils of consumer advertising is that it implants the idea in everyone's heads that buying more material things = happiness.
And the ideal consumer is one which only stops buying when they've reached their income...
Which they suggest will make you happier.
The most toxic high-income advertising is all based around creating a need and then fulfilling it... because it turns out wealthy people tend to already have enough things to make themselves happy, if they looked at them differently.
All advertising is based around creating a need and fulfilling it, but not all of those needs are toxic. Imagine getting an advertisement for a concert for some musicians you've never even heard of. You hear their music, and maybe they even have some showmanship. You like what you see and hear, and now you have a need you didn't have before, whether that's going to a KISS concert or whatever kinda music floats your boat.
Toxic ads encouraging you to indulge in toxic behavior, like an Instagram ad making you think you don't matter if you don't publicize every hour of your life, are a different animal.
That's all I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to be pedantic or anything. I just don't think putting out a Disney World ad of a happy family eating breakfast with Mickey Mouse is promoting or exploiting toxic values even though it convinces you that you need something you weren't aware of yesterday.
So in order for FIRE to kill off McMansions and luxury cars most people would have to become resistant to advertising (or advertising would need to be limited).
"If you treat people as they are, they will become worse. If you treat them as they could be, they will become better.
If we treat people as if they were what they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
I'm convinced that treating most people as if they have free will is more likely to get them to at least consider my ways.
Mostly because there are infinite ways to misunderstand an individual's motivations and thus arrive at a 'should' prediction that conflicts with observed reality.
Versus reasoning in from 'a lot of people ____, do they still after we ____?'