47 pages • 1 hour read
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas NaylorAffluenza
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Causes”
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “An Emerging Epidemic”
This chapter charts the slow onset of affluenza in the United States from the end of World War Two to the beginning of the 1980s. The authors provide a number of reasons for “a consumer boom unparalled in human history” (132). A combination of reserve savings from the thrifty war years, the development of suburbs and highways, easily available loans and credit, the spread of shopping malls with longer opening hours, and the success of television as an advertising format all contributed to a cultural shift in which “the good life became the goods life” (133).
Despite this unprecedented mushrooming of product development, marketing, and consumer spending, the emerging illness of affluenza did spawn some dissent. The authors mention social critics of all political leanings (Wilhelm Röpke, Vance Packard, John Kenneth Galbraith), and politicians themselves (Presidents Truman, Johnson and Carter), in addition to the countercultural currents of the 1960s and the nascent environmental movement of the 1970s, as examples of opponents of affluenza. Nevertheless, the authors argue that the sickness continued unabated into the 1980s, which is the focus of the next chapter of the book.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Age of Affluenza”
Chapter 15 continues the historical trajectory of Part 2 by focusing on the further acceleration of affluenza beginning in the 1980s. This attitude is embodied by figures like Wall Street scion Ivan Boesky, who famously proclaimed that “greed is good” (139-40). In political terms, the advancement of affluenza is associated with the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, who championed market-friendly policies such as financial de-regulation and lower taxes.
The main subject of this chapter is advertising, “the prime carrier of the affluenza virus” (141). Advertising executives willfully admit that the aim of advertising is to create new consumer needs in order to fuel the cycle of consumption and profit (140). According to the authors, more and more money is being spent on advertising than ever before, with the result that the average American will spend roughly two years of his or her life watching TV commercials (140). Of course advertising is no longer confined to TV: the authors note the expansion of the advertising industry into outdoor billboards, the Internet, and perhaps, one day, even outer space. Drawing once more on the conservative economist Wilhelm Röpke, the authors argue that the hyper-commercialization of our lives has reduced every aspect of life to market imperatives of self-interested gain (143).
Finally, the authors turn to the 2008 financial crisis, a phenomenon that some have credited them with predicting in the 2001 edition of Affluenza. Though they disavow such praise, the authors do note that the core of the collapse, the American housing market, was rendered volatile and unstable by people seeking a lifestyle beyond their actual means. Banks and other lending agencies were only too happy to exploit the affluenza of the less well-off in order to profit from the re-packaging of risky mortgages as financial derivatives. Although the economy in the US has recovered since the crash of 2008, the authors argue that neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered an adequate cure to affluenza. The former urge more economic growth and stimulus without any concern for the environmental consequences, while the latter preach austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. The acute form of affluenza currently ailing us requires a different approach.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “Spin Doctors”
This final chapter of Part 2 looks at the efforts at information suppression and distortion performed by corporations in order to elude public scrutiny. One prominent example is the use of so-called “front groups” (149-50). Corporations form innocuous-sounding associations like the American Council on Science and Health or the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices that disseminate seemingly neutral, objective information designed to obscure the harmful impacts of their activities. Such public relations campaigns extend to politicians, increasingly entangled in the multi-billion lobbyist industry (149), or the media, in which an estimated 40% of news is generated by PR “spin doctors” (152). As the authors argue, corporations have thus developed highly-sophisticated and deceptive means of concealing the most deleterious consequences of affluenza from the public. This creates a cultural environment in which ignorance and misinformation prevail over truth and critical analysis.
The closing example of the chapter is provided by the increasingly prevalent use of fracking (hydraulic fracturing for the purposes of harvesting natural gas) in the United States. The authors cite a study of television news coverage of fracking from 2009 to 2011 that found a mere nine stories on the subject compared to 530 advertisements for the gas industry (153). Such blindspots in the media conceal the stories of people like North Dakota farmer Jacki Schilke, who has seen several of her cows die and her own health decline since fracking began releasing toxic compounds into the air in the area around her ranch (154). For the authors, this disproportion between the truth and the reality of dangerous or destructive forms of corporate activity allows affluenza to continue to proliferate.
Part 2, Chapters 14-16 Analysis
These chapters focus on what the authors call “the Age of Affluenza”: the period of unparalled economic growth in the United States after World War Two. Though not an explicitly-articulated distinction, the authors divide this era into two periods.
The first period is the time from roughly 1945 to 1979. In these years, many citizens of the United States began to enjoy the economic and political ascendance of the nation in the aftermath of World War Two. The economy grew at an unprecedented rate and gave rise to the modern consumer culture predicated upon single-family, suburban homes stocked with a shifting array of commercial appliances, gadgets, toys, and automobiles. This is the classic era of the so-called American Dream immortalized in TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show. The ceaseless cycle of advertising, shopping, and consumption became a kind of Holy Trinity of mainstream culture in the United States.
The second era covers 1980 to the present. This period can be subdivided into two portions. The first is represented by the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the increased emphasis on wealth and consumption that accompanied the twilight of the Cold War. The Oliver Stone film Wall Street (1987) provides a famous depiction of this mentality among the financial class of the period. With the gradual decay of the Soviet Union, it seemed as if capitalism would envelop the entire globe and bring about a new era of prosperity.
But, as the authors note, the time of unfettered economic expansion and accumulation could not last forever. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the limitations of this way of thinking. While the experience of the “Great Recession” has led to renewed criticisms of affluenza, the authors argue that major corporations and industries have hardly relinquished their methods. Advertising, the main vehicle of the affluenza virus, has only grown more sophisticated and invasive in the years since 2008. Vigilance in the face of the deceptive, manipulative promises of commercial advertising is still required to confront the true cost of affluenza on our society and the planet.
