What does Les say about poverty and luxury in today's world compared with the industrialized world?
Much of the world remains in abject poverty and disease, while the western and industrialized world enjoys a lifestyle of sumptuousness. Even America's lower economic levels live like millionaires compared with the poverty-stricken. Advertising convinces people they must have things whether needed or affordable, and many believe there is no end to profit and wealth.
Les explains that many areas of the world are still marked by abject poverty and abject disease, but much of the western world and the industrialized world—including Japan and a fast-rising China—has a lifestyle of sumptuousness. He says that in America even those on the lower economic scale live like millionaires compared with the poverty-stricken of the world. He stresses that advertising is designed to convince people they have to have things whether they need them or can afford them. This world system, he says, lives "deliciously," thinking profit, profit, profit, as long as the stock market rises and they have a big bank account, believing there is no end to it.