affluent society

noun

1. a society in which the material benefits of prosperity are widely available

affluent society

1. A society in which scarcity of resources is not the predominant condition, and a general level of economic well-being has been achieved by most members of society. The term was made current by John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society, which described conditions in the United States after World War II.

Conventional economic theory is based on the assumption that resources are scarce. Therefore, it makes increasing production in the private sector and limiting interference and regulation from the government a priority. In Galbraith's affluent society, this priority is misplaced because scarcity is not predominant. The continued pursuit of conventional economic objectives in an affluent society leads to the conditions Galbraith observed in postwar America: private-sector affluence and public-sector squalor. For example, affluence in the private sector led to the mass availability of automobiles. Because public-sector interference (in the form of regulation and taxation) was discouraged, however, governments could not afford to build adequate roadways to accommodate those automobiles.

Example Sentences

"There are 20 million people in Australia, we're an affluent society and economy," he said.

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There was certainly a self-conscious yet reasoned examination of American society through social criticism in books like “The Lonely Crowd,” “The Status Seekers,” “The Affluent Society,” “White Collar,” “The Other America” and “The Feminine Mystique.”

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"Hunter gatherer societies were the original affluent society," says Claire Walton, the resident archaeologist at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire.

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At an ice rink where she’s taken her son for a skating lesson, another mother watching from the bleachers notices she’s reading John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society.”

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Over the course of his or her life, a typical member of a modern affluent society will own several million artefacts—from cars and houses to disposable nappies and milk cartons.

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