The Affluent Society
“This is a dream era, this is what everyone was waiting
through the blackouts for. The Great American Boom is on.”
Fortune Magazine (1946)
“Never have so many people been so well off.” U.S. News and World Report
(1957)
“The Great American Boom”
Growth can be attributed to several factors…
• Continued military spending
• Physical devastation of other industrial
nations
• More efficient machinery and technology
• Unleashing of a pent-up consumer demand
• GI Bill of Rights (1944)
Baby Boom
• Between 1946 and 1964 76 million Americans
were born
• Post war surge created a massive demand for
diapers, baby food, toys, medicine, schools
and housing
• Later the baby boom generation fuelled the
expansion of a specialized teenage market
An Expanding Consumer Culture
• Proportion of home owners in the population
increased by 50% 1945-60
• Car production soared as a car dependent culture
emerged with suburbia
• 1946 there were 7000 primitive black-and-white
TV sets in the country, by 1960 there were 50
million high quality TV sets
– Advertising budgets increased by 1000% during the
1950s
• Consumer credit soared 800% between 1945 and
1957
People of Plenty
David Potter, People of Plenty (1954)
'democracy is the foremost by far of the many
advantages which our economic affluence
has bought for us'
The Affluent Society
J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958)
Social Balance – Public vs. Private
‘All private wants, where the individual can
choose, are inherently superior to all public
desires which must be paid for by taxation
and with an inevitable component of
compulsion’
The Other America
Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962)
‘in the society of abundance and high
standards of living there is an economically
backward sector capable of being exploited’
Bureau of Labour Statistics: 1929 59% of the
work force was blue collar, by 1957 this had
declined to 47%