Customer Reviews

The Culture of Contentment

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After reading this book I was struck with the profound nature of both the "Economic Accommodation I/II" and "Military Nexus I/II" chapters with regard to the current tax cut proposals and the impending war with Iraq. As Galbraith asserts in Economic Accommodation concerning questionable supply-side tax policy, "it must be emphasized, the required doctrine need not be the subject of serious empirical proof." When, oh when, are we going to realize as an overall society that the 80's boom was a deficit spending trick and the late 90's boom was the product of massive business productivity gains from global expansion after communism, computer/telecom technology and increasing consumer debt (not "the maestro"). As Galbraith points out, the long-term implications of these macro-economic policies are scary, but our culture seems incapable of thinking long-term. The Military Nexus section also makes you wonder about the "War on Terror". A conventional military war on an invisible (or nearly invisible) enemy - Hmmm? Excellent book!

This and all of Galbraith's books are classic. I noticed his books sometimes have gotten rather negative reviews. These seem to come from the same people who will be voting for Pat Buchanan for president. Galbraith is very much a Democrat. His ideas are "liberal". That does not stop him from being one of the most brilliant Economists of the 20th century. The joy of reading his books goes beyond just Gabraith's ideas. In reading his books one gets to know him. He is the sort of writer who lets the reader into his world. Some people may not like what he says. It is hard to take a look at yourself sometimes. Others will cherish his writing.

It's was the lying, reactionary hot air of mindless regurgitating tools like "Kevalgyan" which prompted me to buy and read this book for myself. Galbraith clearly points out (with credible sources and accurate detail) how the immediate greed and the relentless bigger, better, faster drive for ever-higher profits by the economic elite system (which basically run the government and control the media) are planting the seeds of its own destruction. I implore all to read this book. Turn off the reactionary distortion and open your eyes!

I read this book when it was first published and I can confidently assert, after reading a very detailed Congressional Budget survey on income growth over the past 20 years, through both the Reagan And Clinton years, and a throrough reading of the culural trends of the past decade that the author stands virtually vindicated. I suppose only a fairly steep recession will persuade the masses, especially those people of whom Professor Galbraith writes of, something's seriously awry today in many spheres of everyday life and only then might prompt serious consideration to bring the regulatory state back in to remedy these glaring problems. So kudos to Professor Galbraith for an extremely prescient piece of social commentary. Only the most devout free market acolytes could miss the significance of its message!

Amazing how a few months can make a big difference to a reputation. The late J. K. Galbraith, until recently seen as some anachronistic old buzzard of the left, entirely out of touch with the latter-day world of neo-classical righteousness (sample quotes from a review below: "a man who's been wrong so often and on almost every big issue over the last forty years" and whom "no self-respecting economist worth his or her salt would define as such"), is suddenly as popular, in his own field, as J. K. Rowling is in hers.

Suddenly, Galbraith's books, including this once-forlorn, last-ditch attempt to resuscitate the economics of a kinder age, are flying out of the stores (in the UK at any rate - its Amazon.com sales rank suggests the mania hasn't spread to the US just yet).

Timing is everything. What might once have seemed curmudgeonly moaning from an old pinko now, through the wreckage wrought on Wall Street and Main Street, has an air of cool, detached prescience. It reads like an eerily resonant prescription for our times. Suddenly, the folly of cycling no-handed down a hill seems obvious, it hitherto having escaped us.

We might not agree with Galbraith's underpinning leftist values - the objection still stands that it's hard to see how an uninformed, unskilled, own-agenda-pursuing bunch of politicians and civil servants could do any better with something as complex as an industrial economy - but then so does its counterpoint: it's also hard to see how they could have done any worse.

For now, the sanctuary of expertise is hollow, and the world less cares than it ever did what self-respecting economists, let alone highly paid financiers, have to say. What John Kenneth Galbraith had to say about where we were headed, nearly twenty years ago now, look to be pretty much right on the money: An unacceptable skew of assets, wealth and resources toward that small section of the community least in need of them, the ensuing loss, through embrace of market fundamentalism, of parental control over the economy and the waging of an intractable, messy and unpopular war where, in all cases the large disenfranchised minority wear the the majority of risks and miss out on the majority of the rewards.

What he concludes will happen hasn't happened yet, but his accuracy so far ought to give some pause for thought: Suddenly, this disenfranchised mass will fail to see the funny side. And then all hell might break loose.

The result, though Galbraith isn't sensationalist enough to say it, would be puncture of the contented equilibrium: a dramatic realignment of the social pecking order. Revolution, so to say. Hyperbole? Perhaps - but with mass foreclosure and mass redundancy, nor is it entirely beyond the pale.

Galbraith's one possible road out of this - to which he assigns a very low probability - is the unexpected arrival of a new type of socially inclusive administration able to mobilise and constructively engage with said disenfranchised masses. Nearly twenty years ago Galbraith himself saw this prospect as vanishingly unlikely, but - fingers crossed - it looks like it might have happened along just at the critical moment. Perhaps - if President Obama can live up to his colossal billing - all is not quite yet lost.

You do get the sense that Galbraith takes a mean-spirited pleasure in his dreadful prescription, and the supercilious tone is jarring - and hardly calculated to win converts from the chattering classes: no-one likes to be told they're venal, after all, so reactions like the one mentioned above are not surprising.)

There is another operating cause of enfranchisement which might have given Galbraith hope had it been around at the time of writing, which might partly explain the improbable emergence of Barack Obama: the world wide web. Thanks to the net and associated technologies we all have, as never before, the ability to easily and painlessly engage in the political and economic process. Obama understood better than anyone in 2008 that it no longer an option to ignore the downtrodden. Galbraith can hardly be faulted for not foreseeing this, but it ought to be a game changer, both in ensuring engagement and, actually, pulling us all out of the current economic funk.

That's the hope, anyway. In the mean time, if you can bear giving an unreconstructed old leftie his druthers, albeit posthumously, this is an eye-opening read.

Olly Buxton

Galbraith's argument in this book is that since the end of World War II a larger number of Americans have prospered more and struggled less to make ends meet and their new-found contentment has changed society. These changes are because the contented class will not accept any threat to their prosperity.

I'm not qualified to judge the arguments made but I found the them compelling especially given the recent lassie-faire business and anti-government trends.

One major distraction in the book is Galbraith's unusual writing style. Most sentences are phrased oddly, the result sounding like something Yoda might write.

I found "The Culture of Contentment" to be a timeless book on the economic and political aspects of American society.

Galbraith's humor is present in the quote on page on 27 regarding the philosophy about cutting taxes for the rich being beneficial for the middle class and poor. "The doctrine that if the horse is fed amply with oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

Central to the economics of contentment is the general commitment to laissez faire. If the market is left alone(unregulated) all will work out for the best in the end. The author defines laissez faire as an attitude and belief. On free enterprise Mr. Galbraith states- "The free enterprise system fully embraces the right to inflict limitless damage to itself."

Some of Mr. Galbraith's observations on where corporate authority lies- with management rather than stockholders, is shared by David Cay Johnston in "Perfectly Legal", which I read recently. The author expands on that topic on page 55, "As managers have escaped the control of stockholders,they have come increasingly to maximize their own return."

The Chapter "The License for Financial Devastation" reads like it could have been written about the recent financial crisis.

The author brings up the point that pundits seldom discuss the critical view that Adam Smith held of corporations.

History has repeated itself again lately. In the 80s it was the S&L bailout. Today it's the rescue of Wall Street. The authors assessment from more than 15 years ago holds true today; "A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable."

I found his material on the Council of Foreign Relations intriguing. He was a member of the CFR and he viewed that organization and the Trilateral Commission as well as the Bilderberger group as "recreational" organizations with little actual power. "The more purely recreational or rhetorical activities of the foreign policy community count for little in terms of actual change or effect." He also touched on some of the membership and what the qualifications were for membership as well as the reason for founding the CFR.

I enjoyed the book and found that the subject of economics and political aspects of the culture as written by John Kenneth Galbraith was a fast, lively,read. Great book!

This is not a bad "state of the nation" book, I've read much worse before. The central is idea of America held hostage by a sizable minority of affluent and content citizens and therefore blind for the plight of the less well-of is interesting, even thought-provoking. However, one good idea does not make a good book. These 180-odd pages ought to have been condensed in a 5 page article. Also, Galbraith uses this one idea to explain an astonishing variety of phenomena, which undermines its credibility. On the positive side, this book certainly contains some very poignant observations, written in Galbraith's typical witty, sometimes even sarcastic prose.

I would really love to meet the buyers of John Kenneth's Galbraith books -- I think that there's a few bridges that I could sell to them.

But then again, I would really love to meet Galbraith --- how can a man who's been wrong so often and on almost every big issue over the last forty years still find an audience? I think there's a lesson for all of us somewhere, and I don't think that it's necessarily an edifying one.

Galbraith is a classic example of what the lay audience thinks of as an "economist" when the truth is that no self-respecting economist worth his or her salt would define Galbraith as such.

His writing is pithy, and has the veneer of scholarship. His references are wide ranging and seem to display considerable erudition. But at the end of it, you are left wondering, what the hell was the point? And if he does manage to get a point across, it's so much at odds with reality.

JKG's continual ability to churn out his mashed ideas disguised with clever prose has to be a triumph of marketing and self-promotion. Does anyone care about the intrinsic worth of ideas, anymore?