Fusion: poverty amid affluence

It almost seems a contradiction in these circumstances to put forward abundance as an urgent American problem. But in many ways it may prove more insoluble than poverty which, conceivably, could be solved within the framework of America’s present economic structure. Abundance is something else again. Already long past the stage of giving the majority of Americans enough, the United States now faces the staggering prospect of living with too much. The United States has already solved the problem of how to produce; it is only just learning how to cope with over-production and how to sell this great outpouring of consumer goods. And as America enters the automation-computer age. where machines are increasingly taking over the work done by human beings, it faces the prospect of having the most awesome surplus of all-people. Fewer and fewer human beings are going to be necessary to produce more and more things. Quite apart from the economic consequences, the social effects on a people whose ethics, from the beginning, have been bound up with the importance of work, and whose way of life is based on the principle that anybody with guts, determination, the willingness to work and the flair to make a buck, can get ahead – the effect and impact of this new situation will call upon Americans to make a major re-adjustment of every aspect of their lives.

Poverty in an affluent society and abundance creating new and infinitely complex economic and human problems – these exist in the United States now mainly because it has reached a point of such advanced industrialisation. As other nations reach America’s standards, it may well be that they will have to face America’s problems. How the United States solves the problems of poverty and abundance – or fails to do so – will have significant lessons for all of us.