consumer affluence

It is a Cairo of wealthy suburbs and western consumer affluence.

Yet today, though still small by American standards and still largely the domain of women, kitchens are the showcases of Japanese consumer affluence.

Cycling provided an enduring activity for ordinary Melburnians until falling automobile prices and growing consumer affluence saw increasing numbers switch over to the car in the 1940s and 1950s.

Dery seizes on recurring cultural motifs to argue that technological progress and consumer affluence conceal dread and envy, that our computer-fixated society harbors a fascination with messy biology.

"Having a target for self-control, like dieting, helped express but also reconcile moral concerns about consumer affluence," Mr. Stearns writes; the dieting fad become a new kind of Puritanism.