The American Dream

It's strange, I was going to quote a book by Edward Bernays entitled 'Propaganda'. Except I could not find the quote, so I found a Forbes article I will quote instead.

Dr. David Gruder addresses the “Hijacking of Happiness” at TEDx Encintas, March 2014 For example, says Dr. Gruder in his presentation, consider how Bernays’ manipulative philosophy influenced our concept of “The American Dream:” At the end of World War II, Harry Truman had a dilemma on his hands. The economy had come back from The Great Depression during the war and he wanted the economy to continue to grow during peace time as well. So he conferred with experts including Bernays to come up with a plan to cause it to happen. The plan the marketers created was called The American Dream. The dream involved the breadwinner (typically the man) to be working in a job that he didn’t really love and to work longer and longer hours to climb the corporate ladder in order to make the money his family would need to create the high consumerism lifestyle required to keep the economy growing in peacetime. Consumers were being influenced to buy more things and companies were being encouraged to produce more products that nobody really needed in order to keep the economy going well.

Source
I will be scanning through the book later, it may be in the introduction. If anyone is interested, here's an online version of the book.
Propaganda by Edward Bernays

Enjoy!

a reply to: GodEmperor

Indeed. That American Dream was an invention to sell more product and turn the stalwart Americans into consumer drones.
With the only truly functioning post war industrial base, product easily outstripped the American desire for "stuff".
Where as pre-war Americans were living as extended families in larger groupings, the post war -push from Madison
Avenue was to stimulate the concept of that Dream of the nuclear family, parents and kids. Now rather than selling only one refrigerator to a larger extended family, they would sell two or three.

I would go as far as to posit that the whole cult of individualism, though founded on the concept of individual responsibility, which has morphed into a cult of consumerism,really owes its existence to Madison Avenue.

a reply to: GodEmperor

Maybe the fact that the rest of the world was in desolation after ww2 fueled the need for products from the only country that was not being rebuilt under the Marshal plan. Consumerism started under the industrial revolution not after ww2. Many who had done without since the 30’s felt a new energy after the war was over and many of the thing they had done without they were able to buy them in the peace time economy.

I feel like I can't share this one enough....


"The American dream"

An Entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems we have today are nothing new,and why leaders throughout our history have warned us and fought against the current type of financial system we have in America Today.

edit:
not sure why I can't youtube
www.youtube.com...

The best quote about the American Dream:

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin.