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If the obstacles to human development lie in the paucity of resources, in insuperable technical barriers, the task would be hopeless. We know instead that it is too often a lack of political commitment, not of resources, that is the ultimate cause of human neglect. United Nations, Human Development Report, 1991

Most studies show that above a minimal level, income is irrelevant to one's sense of well-being, but companionship & social support increase well-being. Since shopping & consumption are increasingly solitary activities, & watching TV is not genuinely sociable, the increased time devoted to these activities may be responsible for the rising levels of depression, dysphoria, & distrust experienced since the mid-1960s. Advanced societies would be better off if they maximized friendship rather than the getting & spending of wealth. Adapted from the source document.

The defense of capitalism in America is rooted in a preference for the market's justice of earned deserts over the justices of equality and need associated with the polity. These preferences have structural roots in the way governments and markets serve different values and purposes, satisfy wants, focus on fairness or justice, enlist causal attributions, distribute or redistribute income, are limited by rights, and seem to offer either harmony or conflict of interest. Some of these "structural" differences, however, are themselves perceptual, and corrected by changed perceptions of the productivity of government and of our historic predecessors, and by a community point of view involving changed accounting systems, as well as by policies of full employment rather than guaranteed incomes. With few institutional changes, these altered perceptions may partially restore political justice to favor.