What it comes down to, I think, is that there's a sort of churning froth that keeps the 'animal spirits of the marketplace' going, and provides prosperity for a healthy preponderance. Which is a much better ratio than in the past, but I suspect the resources of the continent are capable of far more.
The difficulty is that this nature of things lives in the minds of the people, and it creates a certain way of dealing with people, and a certain way of going through life. Formal philosophy has recognized this with the pragmatic turn, but one doesn't have to have any philosophy to recognize that the people don't have faith in a larger picture, and that people who stand or think outside of the commercial mechanism get dealt with fairly strongly. It's not just the spectacular cases, though. It's in the mind generally, and the most quotidian interactions of the most average people are entirely determined by it.
Now, if you're one of the 60-70% (by no means meritocratically selected) and the only thing you want from the shared life is material possessions, you'll probably live in safety and have backyard barbeques and a large "entertainment center" with the customary Orwellian viewscreen. Quite likely in Ohio.
If the mechanism was entirely self-concerned, and the philosophers and artists could do their thing untroubled by it, that would be one thing. But the ubiquitous monoculture of the industrial mechanisms of prosperity actively seeks out those who aren't on-board with the notion, and treats them rather roughly. They're all in this together, you see.
So, material prosperity for the healthy preponderance, but without faith, and without the transcendental perspective that faith affords, however comprehensible it might have been as a social objective, makes for a very problematic world within which many suffer greatly, and all lose their fundamental birthright as humans -- the transcendent understanding.