Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.

Humphrey’s line is a compact piece of political rhetoric built on a pun: “affluent” (wealthy) versus “effluent” (waste discharge). The contrast suggests that postwar prosperity and mass consumption carry environmental costs—pollution, sewage, industrial runoff—that society has been willing to externalize. The wordplay also implies moral critique: material abundance is not an unqualified good if it produces degraded air and water and shifts burdens onto communities and future generations. In the context of mid‑20th‑century American liberalism, the remark fits an argument that government must pair economic growth with public stewardship—regulation, infrastructure, and conservation—so that prosperity does not literally foul the common environment.