Affluenza combines revealing personal stories and expert commentary with hilarious, old consumer-training films, dramatized comedy vignettes and "uncommercials" to take a funny, irreverent, and yet often hard-hitting look at the American Dream and its impact on our planet. While at times humorous, Affluenza addresses the serious issues that confront society today.

We discover how increasingly over-consumerism begins in childhood and how, historically, advertisers turned a society which once prized frugality and thrift into a civilization addicted to "buy now, pay later" and "use-it-once-and-throw-it-away."

WARNING: Affluenza is characterized by constantly-rising material expectations, perpetual discontent, shopping fever, galloping commercialism, rampant debt, family and community breakdown, growing disparity between rich and poor, and grave environmental threats. It is "a major disease" according to the show's medical experts.

A growing number of people are now choosing to opt out of the consumer chase, finding it wasteful, stressful and ultimately unsatisfying. Trend-experts have identified this.ramement as a growing global trend known as "voluntary simplicity." This documentary will offer hopeful examples of individuals and families who are living happier lives while consuming less.