One of the several places at which American Christianity fails is in regard to economics and work. The greed of capitalism has overcome a "proper desire". According to Barth:
It is here that the revolutions of empty and inordinate desire take place: of the lust for a superabundance which is not the natural and beautiful abundance of life but the overflow of nothingness, which does not decorate anything but only pretends to do so, like a stage-prop instead of the real thing; of the lust for possessions which will not be used even perhaps for the purposes of luxury but are desires only as a security and pledge against future use, or perhaps only for the sake of the idea of possession, as if this were a guarantee of life; of the lust for an artificially extended area of power over men and things in the form of artificial instruments, as if it were not conceit or deception to regard the acquisition of the power of even the mightiest instrument as an increase of one's own real power over life, as if man could add a single cubit to his stature.Nothing in Church Dogmatics encapsulates the current American climate than this: The plight of the 99% and the reality of the 1% in "empty desire".