Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Juliet B. Schor (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 13, 2010

At a moment of ecological and financial crisis, bestselling author and economist Juliet B. Schor presents a revolutionary strategy for transitioning toward a richer, more balanced life.

In Plenitude economist and bestselling author Juliet B. Schor offers a groundbreaking intellectual statement about the economics and sociology of ecological decline, suggesting a radical change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live.

Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. As we travel along this shutdown path, food, energy, transport, and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth-a debt-financed consumer boom- is no longer an option our households, or planet, can afford.

Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead, it's an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure. And as Schor observes, Plenitude is already emerging. In pockets around the country and the world, people are busy creating lifestyles that offer a way out of the work and spend cycle. These pioneers' lives are scarce in conventional consumer goods and rich in the newly abundant resources of time, information, creativity, and community. Urban farmers, do-it-yourself renovators, Craigslist users-all are spreading their risk and establishing novel sources of income and outlets for procuring consumer goods. Taken together, these trends represent a movement away from the conventional market and offer a way toward an efficient, rewarding life in an era of high prices and traditional resource scarcity.

Based on recent developments in economic theory, social analysis, and ecological design as well as evidence from the cutting-edge people and places putting these ideas into practice, Plenitude is a road map for the next two decades. In encouraging us to value our gifts- nature, community, intelligence, and time-Schor offers the opportunity to participate in creating a world of wealth and well-being.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Schor (Born to Buy) introduces her concept of plenitude as a way forward after the recent shattering of global capitalism and continued rise in CO2 emissions. Plentitude is a commitment to enjoying—not exploiting—nature's richness, to envisioning environmental, economic, and psychological health as braided and capable of growing symbiotically and more securely than the business as usual practices that imploded in 2008. Schor pleads for avoiding planetary ecocide: even though the polar ice caps are shrinking and 38% of the 45,000 species studied by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature are under threat of extinction, the West—particularly Americans—continue to create waste and gobble up resources at unsustainable rates (in 2006, the U.S. emission of CO2 was 19.7 metric tons per capita, compared to 1.3 in India). Fortunately, the interest in alternative energy, recycling, and clean nanotechnologies is increasing, and Schor encourages readers to match it by breaking out of a work hard/spend hard cycle, thereby improving both the environment and quality of life. It might be utopian, but it's also fresh, persuasive, and passionately argued, speaking to the individual and the collective. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Plenitude is a meticulously researched dissection of the roots of our economic crisis." ---Paul Hawken, author of the New York Times bestseller Blessed Unrest

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (May 13, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594202540
• ASIN: B004HEXSUY
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #78,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Juliet B. Schor's research has focused on the economics of work, spending, environment, and the consumer culture. She is the author of Born to Buy, The Overworked American, and The Overspent American. Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College, a former member of the Harvard economics department, and a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. She is also a cofounder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to ecologically and socially sustainable lifestyles.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Plenitude" is lacking something July 14, 2010

By A. J. Sutter

Format:Hardcover

This is another in a welcome string of recent American books questioning whether economic growth is as beneficial as it's claimed to be. It makes many good points, so my 4 stars are intended to convey its value to a reader who's new to this theme. But it suffers from the usual American myopia of ignoring anything not written in English -- even though, in this case, the author (JS) turns out to have been familiar with many of those sources. As a result, the book's arguments are shallower than they could have been. In this review, I'm going to focus most on what you're missing when you read this book, so you can supplement it with other ones, some of which have recently been translated.

1. First, some of the good points: JS questions the "growth imperative" at both the economy-wide and corporate levels. You'll also find a good overview of some of the problems with the discipline of environmental economics, and especially of the DICE climate models of Yale's William Nordhaus (which have been very influential on US dialogue and policy). JS critiques technological optimism, and also points out that patents and other intellectual property (IP) are more likely to delay a fix for environmental problems than to hasten it. And she continues her advocacy of shorter working hours, begun in her previous books. Here, there's a highlight on environmental benefits of reduced hours, resulting from consumption shifts due to (i) reduced income, since JS implictily assumes less pay for fewer hours worked, and (ii) increased time at home, which means time to make and grow more of your own stuff. (A little jarringly, JS refers to these activities as "self-provisioning," an image that brings to mind survivalism or heading off on the Oregon Trail.)

2.... Consistent with the approach of other Anglophone writers criticizing growth, JS focuses primarily on environmental issues, plus the recently fashionable field of "happiness" a/k/a subjective well-being (SWB). Even by these "Anglo-Saxon" standards, though, there are some relevant points the book doesn't engage with, e.g.:

@ JS seems to believe that increases in per capita GDP (a/k/a "average income") still have some benefit; but fails to consider that increasing "average income" in the US, Japan and other Western countries has been accompanied by falling median income since the 1980s. In other words, rising per capita GDP isn't benefiting most people economically.

@ The book doesn't include any discussion of "objective" (eudaemonic) well-being (à la Aristotle, M. Nussbaum & A. Sen), which focuses on such things as a person's ability to lead a long and healthy life, unmolested by violence, with educational opportunities, etc. OWB received a lot of attention in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report commissioned by French President Sarkozy, which JS does mention in passing.

@ JS points out that productivity increases could be used to free up work time, making the same amount of stuff in less time. She also decries the usual practice of turning productivity increases into more production, because it leads to means more wear & tear on the environment. But although she does talk elsewhere about financialization of the economy, she doesn't point out its links to productivity issues. The elevation of shareholders in recent decades to demi-divine status, and the trend to turn top management into shareholders through stock options, jointly explain the current productivist practice: more sales tend to make share prices go up, which in turn makes management richer. So do "productivity increases" achieved by *involuntarily* reduced working hours, as when companies fire people -- at least in the US, that makes a company's share price go up, too. Unless we modify these linkages, only the same 10% of the US population who currently receive 90% of all capital gains income, or maybe only the 0.1% who get 49.7% of that income, are likely ever to achieve "plenitude" (assuming such folks have any concept of 'fullness').

3. Outside the English-speaking world, all of JS's points in this book have been under discussion for decades, since even before the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth." Cornelius Castoriadis and Peter Kende were among the first to question economic growth in the '60s, to say nothing of the far more influential Ivan Illich (who wrote in English BTW). André Gorz, who championed shorter working hours for decades, as well as being the father of "political ecology" and the author of a book-length critique of IP (in 2003), wrote on these topics from the 1970s until his death in 2007. All these writers based their critiques of growth not solely on environmental grounds, but also on the basis of what it means to be human.

This humanistic concern remains front-and-center in the European discourse on décroissance/decrescita/de-growth that's blossomed during the past several years. In addition to dozens of books on this subject, especially in French and Italian, the activist monthly publication "La Décroissance" has been sold at newsstands since 2004, and a more intellectual journal, "Entropia," was launched in 2006. Not all "Anglo-Saxons" are entirely blind to this line of thought: Tim Jackson's 2009 report for the UK Sustainable Development Commission, "Prosperity without growth?," managed to find Gorz and Illich, among others, and the Worldwatch Institute's "State of the World 2010" includes a textbox from Serge Latouche, one of the most vociferous décroissancistes (and whose book with the English title "Farewell to Growth" appeared in English in early 2010).

There's no hint of any of this in JS's text or bibliography. The only writers on de-growth she mentions are from Anglo-Saxon countries (in particular, ecological economists P. Victor and H. Daly). Here are some ways in which her argument suffers as a result:

@ Apropos of productivity, JS doesn't think of an entirely different proposal: use *lower* productivity to make the same (or a lesser) amount of stuff in the same or even more time, *at higher quality* and perhaps even employing more people. Jean Gadrey (a member of the above-mentioned Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission), has written several times on his blog in the last couple of years about why the drive to increase productivity is misguided, especially for services though not exclusively so. [PS: This and many other pertinent topics Gadrey discussed in his blog during the past 2 years are now treated in a short book, « Adieu à la croissance », published in France in October 2010.]

@ A key point of the European critique of growth is that private consumption has made people pay less attention to their political roles as citizens or as members of a collectivity. E.g., less time spent working and shopping may mean more time for us to work together to reclaim our government from lobbyists, to think together about our common goals and to act together to achieve them. In contrast, while JS does allude to some forms of collective economic activity outside the usual capitalist framework, the dimensions of collective well-being and politics are entirely missing from her analysis.

@ The Europeans emphasize much deeper interconnections between the issues relating to environment, work and growth. E.g., JS sees only an instrumentalist connection between shorter working hours and the environment: shorter working hours can lead to less pollution. André Gorz not only mentioned that years ago, but also that both ecological damage and the oppressiveness of many forms of work, along with the destruction of the political and the social that result from consumerism, have something in common: they all erode the world of our everyday life.

@ Finally, it's disappointing that the metaphor of "plenitude" in the title of JS's book emphasizes *having* more than *being*, a distinction dating at least as far back as Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be" (1976, in English). While I allow there's some ambiguity here -- "plenitude" might be stretched into a more spiritual interpretation (though JS doesn't emphasize the spiritual at all) -- the title is closer to the related noun "plenty," with its connotations of a cornucopia spilling out with stuff. But "having" is precisely the attitude toward life encouraged by consumerism. So in a sense the book tries to eat its cake and have it, too: even though JS talks about the downsides of consumerism, her central metaphor seems intended to reassure readers that, as womens' magazine covers used to shout in the 1970s, "You CAN have it ALL!" In contrast, a return to an attitude of "being" is what many of the Europeans see as the real goal of de-growth. They emphasize human *activity* rather than mere attainment of a condition.

In correspondence (2010/07) after I posted an earlier version of this review, JS wrote me to say that already in the 1970s she was familiar with some of the French writers I mentioned -- in fact, she was proud to have found them sooner than most people. She explained, though, that mentioning them or not was a "strategic question" relating to "crafting a message that can be heard," and that she thought that for an American "general audience -- not academics -- the approach [she] chose would have more resonance."

I'm not persuaded she's right, for a few reasons. For one thing, what would be the harm in acknowledging the existence of the European de-growth literature, even in footnotes (of which this book for a general audience already has plenty)? That way, at least, readers could find it. More substantively, I'm skeptical that any American who would be moved to pick up this book couldn't "hear" the idea of employing more people to make less stuff, but make it better. Or the idea that having time for collective political action is important -- an idea that already "resonates" with lots of the people who come to Tea Party rallies.

I don't at all mean to discourage you from reading this book. But despite some good arguments, it's far from "groundbreaking," as the publisher's website's claims. Even if you're monolingual, you can now read new translations of Gorz's "Ecologica" and books from Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni on the civil economy and civil happiness, or even Serge Latouche's book, plus Illich ("Tools for Conviviality"), Fromm, and Tim Jackson, all of whose books were in English from the get-go. "Plenitude" may be more plenitudinous in facts and statistics than some of them; but those books present many more dimensions of the issues than you'll find here. Read more ›

48 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars E = ns2 June 3, 2010

By R. Strasser

Format:Hardcover

In the Beginning, the bang was so big that Economics (production, distribution and consumption) created a universe in space and time.

Economics became a product of nature and sunlight (E = ns2) 13.7 eons later.

Plenitude - The New Economics of True Wealth by economist, Juliet B. Schor, said, "The next economic era needs to be devoted to restoring the capacity of the earth to support humans and other life forms."

Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines Plenitude as completeness and abundance. So how does the definition of Plenitude square with restoring the earth?

If you're confused, don't despair, so are Wall Street, Congress and most economists.

Even for those who are talking about taxes and tea in Boston Harbor, Professor Schor of Boston College writes a plan for humanity to weather the eco and econ storms that bedevil E = ns2. She also rewrites some basic economic rules.

The Professor said global capitalism shattered in 2008 and $50 trillion of wealth was erased. Though the global economy has been rescued, it hasn't been fixed, according to the author. Rather than focus on what cannot be done, Juliet Schor points a laser at what we can do:

* Less, Less, More, More - Work Less, Buy Less, Create More, and Connect More - the 4 principles of Plenitude.

* Principle 1. Work Less (shorter hours). A new allocation of time outside the market (your job) - Now you have time for Principle 2.

* Principle 2. Buy Less. Make, Grow - do things for oneself. And sell what you don't use, i.e. food, energy - anything.

* Principle 3. Create More. Take a slow boat to China rather than a fast tanker of goods in the opposite direction - conserve land, air, water and their resources....

* Principle 4. Connect More. Like money and material goods, social capital is an economic term. Connect to each other and community.

Now we can use time, knowledge and technology (TKT) to revise business as usual (BAU) and build community, said Dr. Schor.

Plenitude tells the BAU story of "a truly gargantuan scale of consumption."

The book said the environmental bells first tolled in the 1970s. Then ecological economists reported in 2009 that of the nine identified safe operating zones known as planetary boundaries, we had exceeded three (climate, biodiversity and the nitrogen cycle). And we are approaching limits on four more (freshwater use, land use, ocean acidification and the phosphorous cycle).

And, according to biologists, we are in the midst of a planetary sixth mass extinction.

The consumption extravaganza ended in 2008, and left in its wake two crises - "financial and ecological." Juliet Schor said that economists' support of BAU and bullish beliefs in markets had led to financial and ecological herd behavior, irrationality, corruption and short-termism that threatens earth's habitat for humanity and other life.

America's environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest victim of irrational financial and environmental economics. "Drill, baby, drill" in deep waters now is a call so shrill that only the derelict can deny the dangers.

Production, distribution and consumption may have created the universe, but Economics now confronts the earth.

Plenitude said, "most economists have practiced their craft as if nature did not exist." But the Society for Ecological Economics (SEE) said that ecosystems should be at the core of economic analysis.

Who is right, most economists or SEE? The complexities of economic science aside, Juliet Schor thinks SEE gets it right. Many economists believe that most countries must endure a growing concentration of income as they develop, but once they become wealthy, they can buy themselves more fairness."

A 30-year survey ranks America's income inequality, healthcare and social problems "worse" than any advanced nation on earth (The Spirit Level - Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Wilkinson and Pickett).

Most economists got it wrong - dead wrong. And the over value of income and under value of nature is on track for a long-term eco and econ catastrophe.

An economic externality, the environmental affect (CO2, for example), means that the market is inefficient. Markets, like most economists, now get Economics wrong.

Dr. Schor said, "Climate change is the most serious market failure in human history."

Our TKT from BAU to living rich on a troubled planet is at a crossroads. A debt-financed consumer boom is no longer affordable for households and the planet, said Plenitude.
Juliet Schor talks about - "a better way of human being" - an extraordinarily uplifting plan to repair fractured lives, heal our souls and make us wealthy in ways that have little to do with money and consumption.

For example, "The New Economics Foundation's Happy Planet Index incorporates ecological footprints, life satisfaction measures, and life expectancy into a single metric that measures how efficiently nations are using natural resources to produce happy lives (or "happy life years")."

Plenitude said, "Costa Rica tops the list, with its 99 percent renewable energy, life expectancy of 78.5 years, and average satisfaction score of 8.5 out of 10. (It also has one of the lowest poverty rates in the developing world, is reforesting its land, and abolished its army in 1949). By contrast, the United States clocks in at a dismally inefficient 114th, largely because its ecological footprint is so high relative to "happy life year" results that are about average for wealthy countries."

From Socrates to Schor, civilization has enjoyed the counsel of wise men and women. The spirit of the Dodo bird and Easter Island also speaks to us - "conserve and change, or perish," they said. The con in conserve is Latin for consort, which means cooperation. The serve in conserve is also derived from Latin (servus), which means servant.

For too long a time, humanity has not cooperated with and served Nature; we have exploited ecosystems and resources that serve as home for humans and countless other living species. That home now is in danger of falling down under the weight of eco and econ misdeeds, which are conjoined in a combine of destruction.

Humanity, on the whole, has viewed itself as outside nature rather than as a creature of nature. It also has written nature out of its economic theories, and considers natural systems as an externality to Economics. That view is myopic, in the climatic extreme.

The new formula for Economics, E = ns2, is simple yet accurate. Mankind is a bipedal, primate mammal - a production of nature. Every animal and all life forms are creatures of nature, which also includes inanimate elements and resources on and off the earth. And Economics is a set of rules for production, distribution and consumption of goods and services created by a living species of nature - Humanity.

Land, air, water, food, life and Economics all are productions of photosynthesis powered by sunlight.

Plenitude - The New Economics of True Wealth - is lucid and prescient, and it should lead to a new definition of Economics. If not the one offered here, let's begin the search for a definition that Harvard Economics Professor, Stephen A. Marglin, would approve - one that includes the limits of Economics growth. Read more ›

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope for the Future July 30, 2010

By NanTese

Format:Hardcover

I found this book to be very readable, full of interesting ideas, and inspiring. Behind all the facts and figures and practical solutions to today's problems is an enthusiastic optimism about our potential for improving our lives and our planet's future. Her arguments for why business as usual will not work are compelling and well-presented. She suggests new ways of thinking about work, livelihood, economics, use of time, relationships, environment and communities that are reasonable and realistic. I came away from the book with ideas for change within my own life and a new way of thinking about the world.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Self-Provisioning Resource Conserving Eco-Nut Next Door August 3, 2010

By Betsy Platkin Teutsch

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Amidst the landslide of greening and sustainability books constantly being marketed and touted (get the irony?), two jumped out at me. Reading them as a pair made it clear that Plenitude, by economist Juliet B. Schor, and The Cheapskate Next Door by journalist Jeff Yeager are describing the same contemporary trends using very different language. People can earn fewer dollars without their quality of life being diminished, IF they also experience an increase in free time. This free time can be invested in social capital, healthy lifestyle, creative self-provisioning, and ingenious thrift, aided by everything from social networking to asking grandma to teach canning techniques. Schor's book is analytic; Yeager's is a how-to-do-it manual.
Reading over and over again how we aren't "over" this Great Recession because none of us are buying enough, hence the jobs producing all of it are lagging, has often made me wonder how that squares with the carrying load of the planet. The fact that personal savings have actually increased seems like good news, not bad. The fact that demand for fossil fuels has decreased - isn't that the goal here? Schor, an economist with an emphasis on ecological concerns and the author of two other terrific books, The Overworked American and The Overspent American, reviews the basic theoretical underpinnings of modern economics and concludes that they don't square. As developing world incomes rise, driving massive additional consumption, the world's growth limits will be tested. We can't just keep on extracting finite resources on the cheap and expect it will all end well. Likewise, she predicts there will never again be enough conventional jobs for all who seek work.... We're becoming too efficient and productive for that, through ever improving and disseminating technology.
Schor's solution,, that we cut back on workers' hours, thereby employing more people over all, is not original. This has been tried in many places and times, often to avoid laying workers off. Kelloggs of Battle Creek, Michigan, famously offered a six-hour day for decades which workers loved, along with all the others lucky enough to live there. Schor's original synthesis is to combine this with the new realities of environmental as well as social stress, to definite a life of Plentitude less dependent on material excess. By editing out the waste of American life, and utilizing the dividend of extra time, whole new micro-economies are evolving, allowing people to live healthier, happier lives that - paradoxically - are lower income. She effectively decouples standard of living from quality of life, as happiness studies have been confirming is correct, once people move past subsistence.
She cites examples of lowering overhead by resource sharing, plugging Freecycle, CraigsList, carsharing, Open Source internet software - much of which I have written about over the years. Local agriculture, from gardens to micro-farms, is a favorite example, written about glowingly throughout the book. She describes people once again learning to cook, preserve, sew, and build their own downsized homes. It all sounds very idyllic; I want to believe her, I really do. Except that what she is talking about as a trend looks more like an interesting trickle of outliers (Hi, Anna! How's the honey going?). OK, I grow a few tomatoes. That doesn't make me Ma Ingalls. But perhaps a generation from now her manifesto will prove true. If so, we will all be the better for it.
The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means is a charming hybrid of two terrific classics, The Millionaire Next Door and The Tightwad Gazette. Those books were all about resource conservation from a financial standpoint - why leave good money on the table? TheMND describes a value-oriented affluent population who eschews conspicuous consumption. TTG was more about people scrapping together a nest egg, even on a tiny salary. The secret of both is living beneath one's means. However, they were written before the age of environmental awareness. All their strategies translate quite well to a new eco-age. The Cheapskate took himself on a national book tour - by bike, CouchSurfing his way across the country.
His book is a lot of fun. My main takeaway is that if you create good habits, these too are hard to break. One becomes a reflexively resource-conscious consumer [a description I prefer to "cheapskate"]. Case in point. Two friends and I were at the beach in search of 1% hydrocortisone cream for my friend, suffering from a bee sting. We grabbed the first brand we saw. But I couldn't resist going back to look at the shelf, where I found a generic tube for half the price. Then I saw a generic tube half the SIZE. It is generally more economical, both financially and ecologically, to buy a larger quantity. But! Only if you will finish it all. Having just thrown out boxes of unused, expired OTC meds from my old house, I knew the smaller generic tube was a good choice. Time expended: 1 minute. Amount saved: ~ $6.00. Since I earn less than $6.00 a minute, it was a good use of my time. However, you can't send a child to college or pay for health care -America's two huge and ever escalating price tags - on small salaries supplemented by self-provisioning and judicious cheapskating.
If you're following these authors' advice, be sure to check these books out from your local library soon! Read more ›