“The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business. The feasts of consumption sustain the economy, keep up the volume in the stock markets, employ the unemployable, excite the fevers of speculation and stimulate the passion for political and sexual novelty.” AmericaWealthMoneyClassEconomyCapitalismConsumerismMarket Author:Lewis Lapham
“The restlessness of the American experience lends to money a greater power than it enjoys in less mobile societies. Not that money doesn't occupy a high place in England, India or the Soviet Union, but in those less liquid climate it doesn't work quite so many wonders and transformations. In the United States we are all parvenus, all seeking to become sombody else, and money pays the passage not only from the town to the next but also from one social class to another and from one incarnation of the self to something a little more in keeping with the season's fashion. The American ideal exists as a concept in motion, as a fugitive and ill-defined hope glimmering on a horizon. No coalition, no industry, no source of wealth lasts much longer than a generation, and nobody dies in the country in which he was born.” AmericaWealthMoneyClassPowerSocietyEconomics Author:Lewis Lapham
“Social rank has always been one of the pricier commodities sold in the great American department store, and the ceaseless revision of what constitutes society gives rise to the great American comedy that has been playing continuous performances since the beginning of the Republic. As one generation of parvenu rich acquires the means to buy the patents of nobility, it looks down upon the next generation of arrivistes as clubfooted upstarts.” AmericaMoneyClassSocietyCapitalismCapitalAmerican Author:Lewis Lapham