Me, me, me is past its sell-by date - Times Online .

Rosie Boycott says:

Today, the more-more-more culture that has dominated our lives and behaviour for the past two decades has been uncovered as a sham. The desire to acquire more stuff — and the belief that it will make you happy — is a lie.

If you buy the best BMW on the street, you’ll feel chuffed until your neighbour drives home in a better one.

Acquiring material wealth is a competitive process, based on two basic principles. One, if you buy it, you’ll feel fulfilled and happy, and two, your problems will be solved.

All companies selling, say, make-up, operate on the notion that what you’ve been born with is insufficient and could be bettered.

To put it another way: what the market claims to be well -being is based on the notion deliberately promoted by the advertising industry that all we have, and what we are, is inadequate.

Growth pursued in this way is based on the notion that we will be perpetually dissatisfied. And yet growth is also offered as the means to make us happy.

Are we surprised that economic policies based on this funadmentally flawed appraoch do not work? As a matter of fact they can't. There is an inherent conflict in them from the outset.

Policies based on enhanced equality - showing we are more and not less like other people - do on the other hand demonstrably work.