ABSTRACT
The actor becomes a disc jockey, the composer an arranger, the painter a designer; the writer does TV scripts in that new classic formula, "happy stories about happy people with happy problems". Without attempting a simple explanation of the causes of the age of happy problems, this chapter looks at its consequences for the new postwar young people who should be in full action toward their ambitions and the surest, sturdiest signs of a civilization's health. The age of happy problems has brought confusion and anxiety amid the greatest material comfort the world has ever seen. Culture has become a consolation for the sense of individual powerlessness in politics, work, and love. Now, however, an appeal to emotional insecurity about money—without crass financial trouble—can do good work for an advertiser. Money is spent much more gracefully than in those fantastic times when silver coins were put in ears and jewels in navels.
