The Waste-Makers and the String-Savers:The Waste Makers. Vance Packard

Abstract

r TI~E books economists are accustomed to review are sober, specialized treatises that sell two or three thousand copies and are written with every statemnent carefully qualified lest somneone take exception to it. It thus comes as an abrupt change for me to review Vance Packard's The Waste Makers,' which has been at the top of the best-seller list for mnonths, which sweeps across a broad range of topics, and which deliberately shocks its readers with extravagant statements. Clearly, it is not fair to apply usual academic standards to such a work. Yet it is proper to insist that popular economics be fundamentally sound even when simplified, and journalists who venture into economics should be held to this standard no less than economists who venture into journalism. Packard's main thesis, as almost everyone knows by now, is that American society overemphasizes consumnption, especially the quantity rather than the quality of what it consumes, and that it therefore sacrifices culture, prudence, and a proper concern for the future. He blames these distorted values on the business community, especially on the mnarketers and advertisers who have beguiled the public into accepting false standards. Around this main theme are woven a number of related themes, including the fear of overpopulation and of the exhaustion of natural resources. These concerns are not, of course, original with Packard. He properly acknowledges indebtedness to John Kenneth Galbraith and Fairfield Osborn, among others. However, Packard undoubtedly brings these issues before a wide new audience, which would have been an important service had he not undermined his case with inconsistencies and exaggerations. At his best, Packard reminds one of the muckrakers of half a century ago-of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. The resemnblance is fleeting, however, because Packard's targets are often not worthy of his attack. Steffens exposed the shame of the cities; Ida Tarbell did battle with the Standard Oil trust; Packard comnplains that the brushes in paste pots fail to reach the bottom. It is hard to imagine Lincoln Steffens exercised by such an issue. The basic premise of The Waste Makers is that the American economy produces in such abundance that it faces the grave problem of how to dispose of its products. Packard analyzes a number of business practices, from model changes to credit cards, as attempts by producers to escape from this general glut. The glut, unlike that analyzed by John Maynard Keynes, results not from the lack of effective demand or purchasing power but rather from the satiation of wants. The sated consumer indulges trivial whims, which sellers play on or create. The premise of glut underlies the whole structure of The Waste Makers. * Associate professor of economics, University of Chicago.