The Affluent Society

John Kenneth Galbraith

Why I looked at this book

I've been thinking for a while that Galbraith's work might be of interest, and when the a review for Vince Cable's After the storm said Cable 'brings an almost Galbraith-like breadth of view' it confirmed that it was about time that I read some. I'm hoping this book might point the way to alternatives to our current economic direction (although one has to remember that it was written during what some consider to be the 'Golden Age' of capitalism.

First impressions

The edition I'm reading is the 40th anniversary edition, and it will be interesting to see how it deals with the changes between 1958 and 1998. The first chapter looks at affluence and how it is hard to get away from the idea that we live in a world of scarcity. The second chapter is a bit strange, in that goes on a bit about the 'conventional wisdom'. Now, says Galbraith, others have claimed to attack the conventional wisdom, but have really been reinforcing it, while presumably his attack is genuine. Well, I'll have to see.