Cultural distress (and consumerism)

From this point on, growth was not just good, but the primary aim of political and social systems. We all know now where that has taken us, but some saw it early, including the economist and retail analyst Victor Lebow in 1955: Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of

“Properly manipulated,” Dichter candidly explained to Friedan, “American housewives can be given the sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realization, even the sexual joy they lack—by the buying of things.”

The feeling of abundance is substituted for the reality of economic insecurity—a substitution that is hardly new in American popular culture.