"Morbidly Obese McMansions"

This country is going through a significant change. We are a new nation still, one of the newest in the world, always changing, yet our ideas of development have remained the same. The land of opportunity- where wealth and prosperity could be identified easily by our possessions. Bigger possessions = bigger bank accounts. Life revolves around the marketplace and the choices of what you buy. We created a system of credit where naive consumers could only loose - it was mostly by luck that a few purchases were worth the same by the time they had been "paid off". I think we just didn't want anyone to have it too rough. Funds available all the time and a constant barrage of marketing resulted in a population always getting what they "want". Credit became the largest business in the country and it took us a generation or two to figure out that it wasn't usually helping us.
Not too long ago, people were buying huge houses not because they needed them - but because they could. Now people are buying a house as a suitable place to live, not a trophy. A similar event occurred about 100 years ago when smaller bungalows replaced the enormous Victorian-style homes of the time. It's true we can't keep building McMansions; we'll run out of space and materials before we run out of people.

Steady as we go....