Wealth & Money Quote by John Barrymore

America, in Barrymore's telling, is a place where convenience is so cheap it becomes a kind of trap. The joke hinges on the whiplash between "a lifetime supply" and "two weeks" - a comic exaggeration that lands because it feels emotionally true. The country that mass-produces relief also mass-produces the reasons you need it. Aspirin isn't just medicine here; it's a metaphor for the American deal: low prices, high velocity, endless consumption.

Barrymore was an actor who lived through the rise of modern advertising, chain stores, and the early consumer-health boom, when patent medicine culture was still in living memory and over-the-counter cures were becoming everyday rituals. His era also knew Prohibition, the Great Depression, and the kind of public-facing hustle that made stress look like a national pastime. Read that way, "use it up in two weeks" isn't about headaches as much as the pace of life: a society engineered to run hot, then sell you something to cool down.

The intent is wry, not moralistic. Barrymore doesn't sermonize about capitalism; he undercuts it with a prop anyone recognizes. The subtext is that America excels at treating symptoms while quietly intensifying the underlying condition - anxiety, overwork, self-medication, the need to keep going. It's a one-liner with an actor's timing, but it cuts like social criticism: the bargain is real, and so is the burnout.