Many people say that we now live in ‘consumer societies’ where money and possessions are given too much importance. Others believe that consumer culture has played a vital role in improving our lives. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Consumerism is a complex issue that has a wide social and environmental implication, and discussion about it is a very controversial one. People are on both sides of the arguments, and both of them have very strong reasons that support their opinion. Some of people say that consumerism has lots of drawbacks, while others say that it has many advantages. The most important advantages of consumerism are that it helps in creation of new jobs; as a result the number of unemployed people in the community should be decreased. Furthermore, it improves the quality of citizen’s life and reduces the poverty of the society. For example, in the developed countries, workers earn enough money that makes their life better and problems related to poverty like homelessness should be reduced. In addition, consumerism helps and encourages creativity in business because the employee will do their best to be creative to earn more and more money. On the other hand, others argue that consumerism has lots of drawbacks; Firstly, it tends to ignore the finitude of our planet resources and puts more and more pressure on it. As a consequence, depletion of these resources would occur and the next generations will suffer. Secondly, consumerist societies create waste products that not only destroy our environment, but also it carries bad effects on our health. Finally, money is not the only factor of happiness and paying attention to gain money only may lead to suicidal attack. For instant, recent social researches showed that numbers of people who kill themselves are highest in rich countries. To sum up, to overcome the negative impacts of consumerism, governments should not only explain that drawbacks, but also should help their citizens to benefit from it without destroying our environment.