The Waste Makers

A startling revelation of planned wastefulness and obsolesce in industry today

by Vance Packard

Longmans, Green and Co., 1961, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, no inscriptions, a little foxing and marking to endpapers, price-clipped dustjacket shows edge and shelf wear, rubbing, chipping, closed tears, creasing and discolouration (see photographs)

“The author of The Hidden Persuaders and The Status Seekers mordantly surveys the methods that have arisen in America to combat the great economic bogey of this century – over production.  “Planned obsolescence” of so-called consumer “durables” has, he contends, been one important method in the years of “growth-manship” since the end of World War II.  Other no less insidious means have been promoted – the worship of “consumerism”, the encouragement of waste, the temptations of limitless H.P. borrowing (even children are being exhorted to take advantage of “credit cards”), the suggestion that anything “used” is shaming to its owner, the exaltation of self-indulgence and the planned chaos that leaves the buyer bewildered and helpless amid the shambles of phoney “price-cuts”, “sales prices”, “special discounts”, etc.
Mr Packard emphasises, too the effect this is having on the natural resources of the planet, for “Americans have used more of the world’s resources in the past 40 years than all the people of the world had used in the 4,000 years of recorded history up to 1914”.”