{"id":49273,"date":"2020-12-21T21:52:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T20:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=49273"},"modified":"2020-12-21T21:52:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T20:52:37","slug":"richard-smith-how-to-stop-affluence-destroying-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/12\/21\/richard-smith-how-to-stop-affluence-destroying-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Smith: How to stop affluence destroying us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The starting point for John Kenneth Galbraith\u2019s book <\/span>The Affluent Society<\/span><\/i> is that for most of recorded history most people have been poor, meaning that they struggled to feed, clothe, and house those themselves and their families. (It may not have been that way before the start of farming\u2014\u201cthe fall of man\u201d\u2014but Galbraith doesn\u2019t discuss that.) He is concerned primarily with the failure of economics to adjust to the fact that societies like the US and the UK are now affluent, and he argues that that failure has profound\u2014indeed, probably catastrophic\u2014consequences for us all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Galbraith\u2019s book was named one of the New York Public Library\u2019s \u201cBooks of the Twentieth Century,\u201d and although published in 1958 (and tweaked in 1999), it has just as much relevance now as then. The power of the book lies not only in its argument but also in its style: Galbraith, a lover of Trollope, writes in a style like that of the 19<\/span>th<\/span> century novelist with a gift for witty phrases and one-liners. Four examples: \u201cWealth is the relentless enemy of understanding\u201d; \u201cFew people at the beginning of the 19th century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted\u201d; \u201cWe face here the greatest vested interests, those of the mind\u201d; and \u201cNegative thoughts cannot but strike an uncouth note in a world of positive thinking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The two great problems of everybody being poor are security and inequality. Poor people are constantly insecure: crop failure, unemployment, or death of a breadwinner can destroy a family. Although most people were until recently poor, some were fabulously rich, giving Gini coefficients a whisker away from one. The distribution of the world\u2019s wealth still has the shape of a champagne glass with the top quintile of the population representing the bowl and most of the wealth and the bottom four quintiles the stem, being equally poor.<\/span><\/p>\n

The industrial revolution and particularly production made inroads on insecurity and inequality. People earned money working at making things, although often in terrible conditions (as today in Bangladesh\u2019s garment factories). Food, clothing, and housing became more affordable. Insecurity and inequality were eroded, but have never disappeared even in wealthy countries. Growing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) became the aim of societies and remains so.<\/span> \u201c<\/span>No one should doubt,\u201d observes Galbraith, \u201cthe convenience of a simple arithmetical measure of success in a world in which so many things are subjective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, argues Galbraith, increased production and growth of the GDP has become the obsession of economists and governments long after those in affluent societies have enough \u201cstuff.\u201d Because we have essentially all we need we have to be made to want things we don\u2019t need\u2014the job of the advertising industry. As Galbraith puts it: \u201cEconomic theory has managed to transfer the sense of urgency in meeting consumer need that once was left in a world where more production meant more food for the hungry, more clothing for the cold and more houses for the homeless to a world where increased output satisfies the craving for more elegant automobiles, more exotic food, more erotic clothing, more elaborate entertainment\u2014indeed, for the entire modern range of sensuous, edifying and lethal desires.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The consequence of this overconsumption that concerns us most now is destruction of the planet, and in the penultimate sentence of his 1999 afterword Galbraith writes:<\/span> \u201c<\/span>Let us protect our affluence from those who, in the name of defending it, would leave the planet only with its ashes.\u201d But Galbraith does not write about externalities and how producers do not have to pay for poisoning our air, water, and soil. What he dreads most from our affluence and obsession with production is our capacity to disregard those who are not affluent (think of those drowning in the Mediterranean and Channel) and the possibility of nuclear war. (His concern makes me think of how manufacturer of arms is of central importance to the economy of many developed countries, including Britain.) Beset with new worries of the pandemic, climate change, and being taken over by our machines, dread of nuclear war has slipped down the list of worries\u2014but may well be where the climate crisis will lead us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Galbraith\u2019s book is best known now for his phrase of \u201cprivate opulence and public squalor.\u201d Roads are full of potholes, the police are understrength, social services are threadbare, school buildings are leaking, and most of the country can hardly be reached by public transport. \u201cIt is scarcely sensible,\u201d writes Galbraith, \u201cthat we should satisfy our wants in private goods with reckless abundance, while in the case of public goods, on the evidence of the eye, we practice extreme self-denial\u2026.Even public services that prevent disorder must be defended. By contrast, the man who devises a nostrum for a non-existent need and then successfully promotes both remains one of nature\u2019s noblemen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The book does describe responses to the problem, beginning with finding another aim from growing GDP, including \u201ccompassion, individual happiness and wellbeing, [and] the minimisation of community or other social tensions.\u201d Galbraith advocates more investment in and expenditure on public goods and services, including \u201cbringing the level of unemployment compensation much closer to the average weekly wage and to extend greatly the period of eligibility.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Observing that \u201cThe survival of it [poverty] is remarkable\u201d and that \u201cWe ignore it because we share with all societies at all times the capacity for not seeing what we do not wish to see,\u201d Galbraith advocates a major attack on poverty. It\u2019s clear that he was thinking mostly about the US as he wrote his book, but his formula should work worldwide: To keep poverty from being self-perpetuating \u201crequires that investment in children from families presently afflicted be as little as below normal as possible. If the children of poor families have first-rate schools and school attendance is properly enforced; if the children, though badly fed at home, are well nourished at school; if the community has sound health services, and the physical well-being of children is vigilantly watched; if there is opportunity for advanced education for those who qualify regardless of means; and if, especially in the case of urban communities, housing is ample and housing standards are enforced, the streets are clean, the laws are kept and recreation is adequate\u2014then there is a chance that the children of the very poor will come to maturity without inhibiting disadvantage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a good place to end my article on Galbraith\u2019s book because this last quote\u2014a single sentence of 106 words\u2014illustrates his use of the classic devices of rhetoric, in this case the periodic sentence. The great example in English is Rudyard\u2019s Kipling\u2019s poem <\/span>If<\/span><\/i>, where tension builds as the sentence never seems to end. Galbraith was a great economist, a great writer, and a great human being.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Smith<\/strong>\u00a0was the editor of\u00a0<\/em>The BMJ\u00a0until 2004.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The starting point for John Kenneth Galbraith\u2019s book The Affluent Society is that for most of recorded history most people have been poor, meaning that they struggled to feed, clothe, […]<\/p>\n

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