I considered adding "the rest of the world (or what I know of it)", but that is kind of implied, as no single person can plausibly have knowledge of life in eve

I considered adding "the rest of the world (or what I know of it)", but that is kind of implied, as no single person can plausibly have knowledge of life in every single place in the world. I lived in a few different places in Europe, and while the underlying desires that power materialism might be the same as in the US/Canada, I would very strongly argue that the practical manifestation of those desires is still at least an order of magnitude lower. Or in other words: middle-class Americans have much easier and cheaper access to industrialized goods, not to mention large housing, than most of their EU counterparts.