The Affluent Society

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998 - Business & Economics - 276 pages

John Kenneth Galbraith's classic investigation of private wealth and public poverty in postwar America

With customary clarity, eloquence, and humor, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith gets at the heart of what economic security means in The Affluent Society. Warning against individual and societal complacence about economic inequity, he offers an economic model for investing in public wealth that challenges "conventional wisdom" (a phrase he coined that has since entered our vernacular) about the long-term value of a production-based economy and the true nature of poverty. Both politically divisive and remarkably prescient, The Affluent Society is as relevant today on the question of wealth in America as it was in 1958.

 

Contents

The Concept of the Conventional Wisdom
6
Economics and the Tradition of Despair
18
The Uncertain Reassurance
29
The American Mood
43
The Marxian Pall
59
1
68
Economic Security
81
The Paramount Position of Production
99
Inflation
154
The Monetary Illusion
166
Production and Price Stability
177
The Theory of Social Balance
186
The Investment Balance
200
The Transition
209
The Divorce of Production from Security
217
The Redress of Balance
223

The Imperatives of Consumer Demand
114
The Dependence Effect
124
The Vested Interest in Output
132
The Bill Collector Cometh
143
The Position of Poverty
234
Labor Leisure and the New Class
243
On Security and Survival
255
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About the author (1998)

John Kenneth Galbraith is a Canadian-born American economist who is perhaps the most widely read economist in the world. He taught at Harvard from 1934-1939 and then again from 1949-1975. An adviser to President John F. Kennedy, he served from 1961 to 1963 as U.S. ambassador to India. His style and wit in writing and his frequent media appearances have contributed greatly to his fame as an economist. Galbraith believes that it is not sufficient for government to manage the level of effective demand; government must manage the market itself. Galbraith stated in American Capitalism (1952) that the market is far from competitive, and governments and labor unions must serve as "countervailing power." He believes that ultimately "producer sovereignty" takes the place of consumer sovereignty and the producer - not the consumer - becomes ruler of the marketplace.