One theory offered in relation to the economic stagnation we are experience is that levels of economic naturally level off from the more exponentially ones during the growth and development phase. The idea of Endless/Infinite Exponential Economic Growth is one of the fictions concocted by conventional economic theories who are either ideologically or economic tied to the prevailing power structure.
We are in a mature economy phase and headed towards the reality of Steady State Economics. Unfortunately through its the people in the middle and the bottom who get hit the hardest. So they are also mostly likely to have to develop some common sense guiding their economic decisions given they only have so much money to spend start to realize that spending more money on say the ipad retina is really not very sensible given the screens are at a point where they look great.
Yes people can make do with less fancified technologies because we are a technology plateau where the conventional technologies are delivering us a supreme sensory experience. Its a good thing too because so many of us could not afford to spend 2 grand on a virtual reality machine much less Google Glass. Yet this is increasingly the providence of the luxury economy. And for this reason much as we have developed and developing worlds we also have an emerging fifth world