Somehow the kids grew up.

It is a capital mistake to accept anything the Left has to say about the "middle class," "materialism," or "consumerism."

Over the past century their ideology was unable to deliver the prosperity in the real world that it had promised. The result in a lot of cases was a massive "sour grapes" maneuver to discredit the very idea of material prosperity and the desire for it.

The funny part is that those leftists who are the most famous for spouting this stuff are rarely living a low-priced lifestyle themselves, and usually in the U.S. instead of one of their socialist fantasy nations. Ehrenreich's house is in the Florida Keys, oceanfront, and worth over a million dollars.