Do you really need it or just want it? new research suggests we want lots of it and think we really need it. The number of consumer products americans say are necessities has multiplied in the past decade, suggesting that items such as microwaves or air conditioning once considered luxuries are things we can't live without anymore, according to a pew research center survey released thursday. The more of these goods you have and the more available they are, the more you feel you need, says paul taylor, executive vice president of the pew research center. The results are based on telephone interviews completed last month with 2,0 adults 18 and older. They were asked to rate 14 consumer products, including televisions, clothes washers and dryers and high speed internet as either a necessity or a luxury. On the necessity side, the most needed was a car, with 91% saying it's a necessity.

The report found that people increasingly view more items as necessities rather than luxuries. It also found that the need for gizmos and gadgets has accelerated, even compared with a 1996 survey conducted by the washington post. A home computer, which 10 years ago was considered a necessity by 26%, is now considered a necessity by 51%. New technologies not only give us something new we can covet and feel like we can't live without it, they transform the way life is organized, says robert thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at syracuse university. What used to not be a necessity because nobody had it first becomes a luxury, and then it becomes a necessity. Things that you lived without before they were invented they really do become necessities.

The higher someone's income, the more likely they are to view goods as necessities rather than luxuries. About 45% of adults with incomes of $100,0 or above rate at least 10 of the 14 items in the survey as necessities, while only 15% of adults with incomes below $30,0 think similarly. Rural residents view fewer of the 14 items as necessities, with 33% saying five or fewer are really needed. Only 23% of those in cities and 24% of those in suburbs thought five or fewer were necessities. Eighty four percent of residents who live in hot climates think home air conditioning is a necessity, compared with 61% who live elsewhere.

Men are more inclined than women to view microwave ovens and dishwashers as necessities, while women are more inclined than men to see air conditioning as a necessity. Such feelings are also influenced by advertising and a consumer culture run amok, which wallin says suggests to her that people are always looking for something to make our lives easier. We have become a lot less self sufficient about things and rely more on machines and technology to do stuff for us. The cellphone is the perfect example of how a gadget infiltrates the culture, wallin says. When cellphones first came out, they were a novelty and there weren't that many uses for it. Who would you call? the more an item penetrates the culture, the more applications it has and the more we rely on it, she says.

It is a word whose meaning shifts and changes like the shape of a mountain in a driving mist. To the political economist, luxuries are all things which are not necessary to life and efficiency, and therefore they include many things, not only innocent, but very desirable. But to a puritan preacher, luxury was of the devil, and a temptation to mortal sin. Moreover, luxury is not absolute idea we cannot say of any particular thing that it is in itself a luxury. For what is a luxury to one class of people, or in one country, or in one period, may be a necessary to another class, in another country, or another period.

As the standards of living rise, things that were luxuries to the grandfathers become necessaries to their grandsons. As the economists classify things as necessaries and luxuries, perhaps it will help us to a definition of the latter word, if we consider necessaries for a minute. Necessaries for life and efficiency are a sufficient quantity of wholesome food, warm clothing, fuel and shelter. But can any man, except the poorest, be content with only such bare necessaries? the bible says, man doth not live by bread alone. And for real living, as distinguished from mere existence, many other things than food and clothes and a house and fuel are necessary. And the higher the standard of life to which any particular man has become accustomed, the greater the number and variety of things that are necessary. A child brought up in a poor working mans home is quite comfortable and happy with very few things but a boy reared in a well to do family becomes so accustomed to a certain standard of house, furniture, meals, dress, servants, and various conveniences, that he would be absolutely miserable if he were compelled to live in a working class family.

These things, which to the poorer man would be luxuries, are, therefore, to him real necessaries for though he might exist without them, he could not live in the fullest sense of the term without them. To an eager scholar, books which to many men are luxuries and quite unnecessary are more necessary even than food and drink and shelter and many a student would rather go without a fire on a cold night than deprive himself of his books. The lover of luxury loses his capacity for work or sustained effort of any kind his moral fiber is softened, the distinction between right and wrong is blurred, and the whole man becomes in time physically, mentally, and intellectually degenerate. When rome was a small republic, the romans were noted for their simplicity of life, self control, courage, loyalty, honesty, and hardihood. But when rome became a wealthy empire, the romans gave themselves up to luxury, and in time became so effeminate and pampered that they fell an easy prey to the hardy barbarian invaders from north, who overran and conquered their great empire.