Did the Protestant Ethic Disappear? The Virtue of Thrift on the Cusp of Postwar Affluence

Abstract

After World War II, the United States moved into what historians are now recognizing as a full-blown consumer society. Consumer society carried with it vast cultural changes, including shifts in fundamental values. Not least important were shifts in the practices of thrift, as seen in how Americans regarded personal savings and debt. Traditionally seen as opposites, those two economic behaviors became intertwined in the 1950s, as Americans continued to save, not to accumulate wealth but to spend and often even as they took on consumer debt. Thus, the 1950s were a tipping point between industrial capitalism and consumer capitalism.