When the book Problems of Postwar Capitalism in the United States addresses the importance of marketing in American capitalism, I will agree with the fact that advertising is extremely important in stimulating the economy. I will also agree that because of the money we spend on advertising and products, it kind of has an effect on the job market, but at one point in the book they said that more products will continue to create more jobs. I think that, as with most things, this happens up to a point, but maybe our society has reached this point. Advertising a product will create a need for people to buy that product, but at what cost?

Customers will stop buying something to buy something new, and while the new product is getting more customers, the older product is losing customers. In this case, the labor market does not change. Since one company needs more employees, the other will need fewer. There is more or less something for everything in the world today, so once you bring something new to the market, it will simply take customers from another group.

For whatever reason, reading this book made me think of my 6 week stay in Ghana. Reading here how fragile capitalism seems to be and how our market, shopping habits and labor market affect our economy so much, I realized that much of this was not present in Ghana. I am not saying that your society is a better place than we are, but stress related to certain problems does not exist there. In capitalism I feel that all people want to succeed. You work for prestige and wealth is always a problem. In Ghana, fame, wealth and power play a less important role in people’s lives and therefore the general public is much less stressed on a day-to-day basis.

From this book I learned that capitalism might not be the way to go. This is somewhat contradictory because most Americans have been brought up learning that capitalism is the only option and that it is the right path. Reading about capitalism’s dependence on advertising and buying products is puzzling because if that market ever died or was disrupted, capitalism would fail. I am also very interested in going green and constantly buying new products seems like a waste to me. If products were made to last a long time and not break or become obsolete, people could save money and waste less. Unfortunately, after reading this book, I now see that if this were the case, capitalism would suffer greatly. I believe that in the future we will have to find an alternative to capitalism.