A Million Dollars of Face Cream
MORGAN, EDWARD P.
Our 'cornucopia economy' stands against Russia's with A MILLION DOLLARS OF FACE CREAM By Edward P. Morgan AT A SMALL social gathering in the nation's capital the other night, a Washington...
...Just a minute...
...And the argument might be made that the average Russian, with or without the appetizing assistance of a Madison Avenue advertising campaign, could be converted into just as ravenous a consumer if his wraps of economic restrictions were removed...
...EDWARD P. MORGAN, a long-time observer of the Washington political scene, has a regular nightly program over the American Broadcasting Company sponsored by the AFL-CIO...
...Is a million dollars worth of face cream equal to a million dollars worth of hydroelectric power...
...Kremlin planners have been obliged to increase the accent on consumer goods...
...the orthodox arbiters of Communist culture are being forced, little by little, to lift some of the heavy drab-ness from Soviet life and inject splashes of lightness and color...
...The question is, in effect, can we afford to live in private opulence and public squalor...
...economy, the Administration too often ignores a comparison of what areas the growth is in...
...If it isn't, is it creeping socialism to channel more funds into the public sector of the economy...
...He reports that $25 billion a year is spent on disposable packaging...
...But he is not soon to be given that opportunity...
...countered the diplomat...
...One of the marvels of our cornucopia economy is supposed to be that any American with the cash or the credit can buy a massage machine or a power-driven swizzle stick if he wants it—whether he needs it or not...
...Shopping in the Government's gigantic GUM department store in the Soviet capital in July 1959, I was dumbfounded to see a Russian customer buy not only an electric razor but a portable vibrating machine to indoctrinate his muscles with flexibility...
...True enough that it is easier for the Russians to increase their rate of economic growth over ours because they start from a base so far below us...
...By the same token in reverse...
...But in raising one of its favorite defenses of the adequacy of the U.S...
...Is the exploitation of what Packard estimates will be a $20 billion teen-age market by 1970 more important than the improvement of public services and education for those youthful consumers...
...We follow the industrial index and kilowatt consumption just as avidly as you Americans follow the batting averages in baseball...
...It is around these points, it seems to me, that discussion of our relative strength should revolve...
...While Senator Barry Goldwater and the Americans for Democratic Action are mauling each other over that issue I wonder if it isn't possible that the public is becoming a little more conscious of, and possibly even a little more disturbed about, what some irreverent observers of the brimming fulfillment of the American dream bluntly call waste...
...No U.S...
...Somewhere in this preposterous anecdote, however, lies a grain of truth which may illuminate a disturbingly different sense of values between our open and Khrushchev's closed society...
...In 1959, more than $11 billion was spent in this country on advertising, much of it creating markets for products built to "die" about the time they are paid for or for gadgets that will be discarded before they wear out...
...And, who will succeed or fail first...
...The Waste Makers...
...Our 'cornucopia economy' stands against Russia's with A MILLION DOLLARS OF FACE CREAM By Edward P. Morgan AT A SMALL social gathering in the nation's capital the other night, a Washington correspondent couldn't resist the temptation to rib a young Communist diplomat politely over the crashing dullness of the Soviet press, crammed as it is with statistics on steel output from the Urals and other delectable data...
...There is a touching cameo for you, carved in the heavy bas-relief of propaganda—millions of Marxists poring over the latest production figures in Pravda while productive life in America grinds to a halt as the populace fixes its collective gaze on the World Series...
...politician, no matter how hell-bent on austerity, would be insane enough to suggest that baseball was a time-wasting activity that had to go...
...On my desk is a copy of Vance Packard's latest best seller...
...You don't realize how deeply interested most of us are in whether shoe manufacturing is up or down...
...If we don't acknowledge and activate the right answers to those questions we stand to lose a World Series of somewhat larger dimensions than the one recently played...
...So one of the central double-jointed questions in the East-West power struggle is this: Can the Communists build the hard productive strength they need before dissatisfied consumer demand deflects their efforts into broader, spongier civilian fields and can we take the productive strength we already have and make something more constructive out of it after we have been flooded with an abundance of questionable value...
Vol. 44 • October 1960 • No. 41
