Define by Affluence

Half a century before the postwar era began, the connection between one kind of abundance and national character was postulated by Frederick Jackson Turner , who argued that America’s democratic culture was shaped by the fact of the frontier, which promised land for all comers. In 1954 , the historian David M. Potter , in “People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character,” explored, among other subjects, how the ubiquity of advertising (also a preoccupation of John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Affluent Society,” in 1958 ) conditions Americans’ consciousness. In 1976 , the sociologist Daniel Bell warned about what he called “the cultural contradictions of capitalism,” by which he meant the tendency (or so he thought) of the abundance that capitalism produces to subvert the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for capitalism’s success — thriftiness, industriousness, the ability and willingness to defer gratifications.
It took confidence for Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, to venture onto this well-plowed ground with “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.” This constantly stimulating book vindicates that confidence. His thesis, stated ironically with Karl Marx’s categories, is that in the second half of the 20th century, America left the “realm of necessity” and entered the “realm of freedom.” Americans “live on the far side of a great fault line” separating them from all prior human experience.Half a century before the postwar era began, the connection between one kind of abundance and national character was postulated by Frederick Jackson Turner , who argued that America’s democratic culture was shaped by the fact of the frontier, which promised land for all comers. In 1954 , the historian David M. Potter , in “People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character,” explored, among other subjects, how the ubiquity of advertising (also a preoccupation of John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Affluent Society,” in 1958 ) conditions Americans’ consciousness. In 1976 , the sociologist Daniel Bell warned about what he called “the cultural contradictions of capitalism,” by which he meant the tendency (or so he thought) of the abundance that capitalism produces to subvert the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for capitalism’s success — thriftiness, industriousness, the ability and willingness to defer gratifications.