The Bilvavi (R’ Itamar Schwartz) has a long essay about the topic of over-materialism in the US, addressed to all frum Jews here. Here are a few paragraphs (google a sentence and you can find the rest on his website):
Our Lavish Lifestyle
People here [in America] are not just living in opulent homes, but in palaces! The houses of people here are becoming like graves.
This way of life was not how our ancestors lived. They lived and sought something completely different.
I can practically guarantee that your Gan Eden (Paradise) will not be nice as your houses. The Chovos HaLevavos writes that this world and the next are opponents. If so, they cannot coexist. Where should there be opulence? Either in the Bais HaMikdash (Temple), or in Gan Eden, but there should not be such a thing in this world.
This way of life has become so deep-rooted here that you do not understand that this is not the true way of life. This way of life has been going on for a few generations already.
How much do you work to pay for your house? People are devoting the entire day, their whole lives, to pay for more and more materialism.
If someone from Europe of old would visit this society, he would assume that this is must be Purim, and that gentiles are masquerading as Jews!
What we see is the opposite of how Jews should live.
Why don’t you immediately get up and move to the Land of Israel? Isn’t it more holy there? Isn’t it a little more spiritual there? It is more than a little. So why stay here? Obviously, because there you will have less money, and your home will be a quarter of the size: only five rooms…you want comfort…
Do we all want Moshiach to come and gather us to the Land of Israel?? Do you want to get up and go there when he comes?? If so, why not do it tonight? If we want true life, with spirituality, not with this materialism among the gentiles, are we able to take the first plane to Israel? But people make all sorts of excuses why they don’t move.
Life here is all about seeking materialism. You all live like the wealthiest. This entire way of life is wrong!