8 /10 1 Votes8
Language English Publication date 1958 Originally published 1958 Genre Non-fiction Country United States of America | 4/5 Goodreads Subject Economics Media type Print Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nominations National Book Award for Nonfiction Similar Works by John Kenneth Galbraith, Non-fiction books, Economics books |
The affluent society book review
The Affluent Society is a 1958 (4th edition revised 1984) book by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The book sought to clearly outline the manner in which the post-World War II United States was becoming wealthy in the private sector but remained poor in the public sector, lacking social and physical infrastructure, and perpetuating income disparities. The book sparked much public discussion at the time, and it is widely remembered for Galbraith's popularizing of the term "conventional wisdom."
Contents
Many of the same ideas were later expanded and refined in Galbraith's 1967 book, The New Industrial State.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called it his favorite on the subject of economics. The Modern Library placed the book at no. 46 on its list of the top 100 English-language non-fiction books of the 20th century.
Themes
Galbraith writes:
"On the importance of production as a test of performance, there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, right and left, white and minimally prosperous black, Catholic and Protestant. It is common ground for the Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, the President of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the President of the National Association of Manufactures.”Galbraith ends the book with another appeal to the importance and need for investment in educating people:
“Whether the problem be that of a burgeoning population and of space in which to live with peace and grace, or whether it be the depletion of the materials which nature has stocked in the earth’s crust and which have been drawn upon more heavily in this century than in all previous time together, or whether it be that of occupying minds no longer committed to the stockpiling of consumer goods, the basic demand on America will be on its resources of intelligence and education.”