The waste makers / created by Vance Packard

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The average American family throws away about 750 metal cans each year. In the Orient, a fmily lucky enough to gain possession of a metal can treasures it and puts it to work in some way, if only as a flower pot." In America it was gound "that each individual man, woman and child was using up to an average of eighteen tons of materials a year". The author of The Hidden Persuaders and The Status Seekers mordantly surveys the methods that have arisen in America to combat the great economic bogey of this century - over-production. "Planned obsolescence" of so-called consumer "durables" has, he contends, been one important method in the years of "growth-manship" since the end of World War II. Other no less insidious means have been promoted - the worship of "consumerism", the encouragement of waste, the temptations of encouragement of waste, the temptations of limitless H.P. borrowing (even children are being extorted to take advantage of "credit cards"), the suggestion that anything "used" is shaming to its owner, the ecalation of self-indulgence and the planned chaos that leaves the buyer bewildered and helpless amid that shambles of phoney "price-cuts", "sales prices", "special discounts", etc. Mr. Packard emphasises, too, the effect this is having on the natural resources of the planet, for the "Americans have used more of the world's resources in the past 40 years than all the people of the world had used in the 4,000 years of recorded history up to 1914". In the feckless and sometimes unscrupulous scramble to achieve consumption as an end in itself, he sees an erosion of the traditional American virtues - hard work, thrift, maintenance and preservation. He suggests that there is an unbalance between the glossy gadgetry of private industry and the poverty of public services, and that money spent in the public sector is just as much part of the "national product" as money spent on gold-plated tooth-brushes. This is a fascinating and frightening book. Industrial countries of the Western World ten to follow where America leads, and already we in Britain can detect the development of similar tendencies. Every thoughtful reader will assess the extent of the deterioration in morals implicit in the spree of consumption and waste which is here so factually, corageously and amusingly described. (Inside cover)