Americans seriously underestimate the amount of brainwashing they have been subjected to and it's quite deep effect. For example, they think they are better off compared to people who have fewer material goods.
I came to the U.S. in 1963 (from Bucharest, Romania) and my first impression was one of relative impoverishement. I was nine years old at the time and thinking like a child: the only thing I was really sensitive to were relations between people, and what I witnessed in this country (in terms of depth of feeling, loyalty, joy in living, integrity, etc.) didn't hold a candle to what I had seen in Romania.
When I was a kid in Romania my life was divided between my grandparents' house and my parents house. My grandparents had cold running water outside, a hole in the ground for a toilet, and a wood burning stove. My parents had a luxurious apartment with bath and kitchen...though we ate out at the luxury restaurant reserved for the intelligentsia every day, twice a day. I considered my grandparents house to be paradise on earth; and my parents house, a living hell. Why? Because until we get conditioned otherwise, the only thing we are sensitive to is love. It sound sappy; it isn't.
Of course, I am assuming that basic needs: hunger, thirst, health, shelter are taken care of.
What happens in the U.S. is that there is such horrendous emotional impoverishment that if you add to that the lack of material goods, people feel utterly empty. It's hard to convince them that the material stuff is just compensation for the life you will never get to live. In this so-so movie, "The Romantic Englishwoman," Michael Caine (playing a middle class wonk) explains to his wife's gigolo that "middle class life has its compensations." "It seems to me," replies the lover, "that this is all it has."
Yours for the revolution,
Joanna B.