My two cents which may or may not be relevant to the conversation at hand:
A large minority of Americans are known to be in a position that they can live comfortably without shocks but would not be able to pay a sudden $1000 bill. This means that while most may be happy with the life they lead, they will very quickly become unhappy with the life they lead should a sudden bill appear in their life.
Examples of potential sudden bills include sudden medical fees, car repairs, and unexpected fines.
It's my personal belief that a lot of this "$1000 predicament" stems from a poor financial literacy.
Some pieces of evidence to support this belief are the prevalence of credit card debt (defined as credit card debt that has had interest paid on it), the prevalence of television ads for such-and-such product with 0% financing for so many months, and a common miscomprehension of the nature of compound interest.
The cumulative result of these pieces of evidence is a consumer behavior that (a) encourages maximal spending at all times and (b) does not encourage substantial saving for future events.
The result of this is the "$1000 predicament".
It is also important to address how people decide whether they are happy with their life: if you ask people in substantial debt if they are happy with their life, chances are they will say yes. The reason for this seemingly nonsensical response is that people in debt only really become unhappy after their possessions are taken from them by whatever institution they have borrowed money from. If they make regular payments on their debt, this will not happen, and so they will remain happy despite being in debt, possibly for life. It should be observed that vast majority of people in debt make payments on their debt--otherwise, lenders would not lend money for fear of frequent defaults. In fact, some people despite being in substantial debt can continue to make purchases that dig them further into debt if they have a good enough record making minimum payments on their existing debt. In this way, debt can be expanded substantially, digging further into savings for the future, while still maintaining a satisfactory standard of living.
I'm not quite sure how this will be resolved once these people enter retirement age. This issue I believe is much more prominent amongst people 50 and younger, who were still fairly young when credit cards entered widespread use. These people still have some time to retirement, and it is an interesting thing to watch what will happen once these people do retire. It is however safe to say that their saving habits will probably remain unchanged up until they retire, and maybe even past it.
Another thing to keep in mind is a common value amongst American parents: children are often left to fend for themselves after reaching 18, or 22, or some fairly young age. Despite the value placed on the so-called "nuclear family", this value only really seems to last until the child reaches adulthood, after which parents and children seem to want to have nothing to do with each other. Notice that this is only common amongst the "peons" of America, and that the rich always seem to take good care of their children well into adulthood. This is an interesting divide in mentality.
