It looks cyclical to me. The materialism of the postwar era led into the civil rights movement of the late 60s and 70s, which turned into the materialistic 80s, which was rejected by the countercultural late 90s and 2000s, after which there was a slight deviation in which transgression rather than anti-materialism was rejected, and now we're back to materialism.
My guess is that in a decade or two society will elevate an ideology that directly opposes material wealth again. If nobody has any damn money then they can't exactly use wealth as a measure of worth.
> It looks cyclical to me. The materialism of the postwar era led into the civil rights movement of the late 60s and 70s, which turned into the materialistic 80s, which was rejected by the countercultural late 90s and 2000s, after which there was a slight deviation in which transgression rather than anti-materialism was rejected, and now we're back to materialism.
The post has loads of graphs going back to the 50's, with trend lines continually going down, not cycling up and down during those time frames.
Sorry, to clarify, wealth-seeking in mainstream culture looks cyclical to me. I was replying to a comment that said that "money won".
I agree that there's a general decline in criminality (which is good) and general risk-taking (which is mixed). I don't see that this is strongly connected to wealth-seeking, given that overall wealth has increased for the majority of people and offset some of the risk involved when sacrificing income and wealth for other values.
My guess is that in a decade or two society will elevate an ideology that directly opposes material wealth again. If nobody has any damn money then they can't exactly use wealth as a measure of worth.