Ending the depression through planned obsolescence

by Bernard London

Ending the Depression
through
Planned Obsolescence

BY
Bernard London

Ending the Depression
through
Planned Obsolescence
BY
Bernard London
21 EAST FORTIETH STREET
NEW YORK, N. Y.

COPYRIGHT, 1932, BY BERNARD LONDON

Ending the Depression
Through Planned Obsolescence

By Bernard London

Frank A. Vanderlip, former President of the National City Bank, of New York, characterized this as a stupid depression. He emphasized the fact that millions were suffering amidst glutted markets and surpluses.

The new paradox of plenty constitutes a challenge to revolutionize our economic thinking. Classical economics was predicated on the belief that nature was niggardly and that the human race was constantly confronted by the spectre of shortages. The economist Malthus writing in 1798 warned that the race would be impoverished by an increase in population which he predicted would greatly exceed gains in the production of foodstuffs.

However, modern technology and the whole adventure of applying creative science to business have so tremendously increased the productivity of our factories and our fields that the essential economic problem has become one of organizing buyers rather than of stimulating producers. The essential and bitter irony of the present depression lies in the fact that millions of persons are deprived of a satisfactory standard of living at a time when the granaries and warehouses of the world are overstuffed with surplus supplies, which have so broken the price level as to make new production unattractive and unprofitable.

Primarily, this country and other countries are suffering from disturbed human relationships.