The following is a discussion of what the short story "The Standard of Living," by author Dorothy Parker, suggests about the beliefs, dreams, and value systems of today's materialistic society through a satire of the lives of two young American working girls. People are shallow, greedy, selfish, and generally immoral creatures--they were in 1941 (when the story was written) and they still are now. What some people do not accept is that a person's quality of …showed first 75 words of 1037 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1037 total…lives as simple wage earners. To me this indicates that, although the people of society have unlimited wants, few have ambition enough to try to satisfy those wants. I know that not everybody who is not rich is lazy, but I still feel that if a person is not willing to work for his or her goals, they do not have a right to complain about being poor when they have no legitimate reason to.