Moving Comfortably Toward Armageddon

...buildup...

...Ultimately, the assault on cultural contentment is an expression of psychological feelings of resentment, rather than a critique of economic realities...

...during the past 30 years is bad, Galbraith tells us...

...Whether it is seen as analogous to the U.S...

...The impression is reinforced by the fact that his attacks on George Gilder, Jude Wanniski, Arthur Laffer, and Charles Murray, among others, are less hard-headed economic analysis than a general denial that free enterprise can cure society's current ailments...

...So he ends with his usual calls for government intervention to aid the poor, reduce the military budget and broaden the tax base...

...He warns against a "contented electoral majority," cleverly implying that he and other dedicated ultra-liberals are speaking for some sort of discontented but non-electoral majority out there...

...I think it should: It captures a moment when the groups at the margins, the extreme Left and the extreme Right, are at their wits' end...

...It is not difficult to parry those contentions...

...Given his track record, you are certainly entitled to wonder whether his current round of crystal ball gazing should be taken seriously...

...What does matter—and what creates difficulties for his analysis—is that contentment is characteristic of a preponderance of Americans...

...In 1982, shortly after the election of Ronald Reagan, he claimed the country was headed for a massive and irreversible depression...

...and a discontented underclass cannot be absorbed into the economy...

...In the absence of a clear alternative, it is morality that becomes the basis of his arguments—his standard for judging the rationale behind, say, spending 5 per cent of GNP on the Armed Forces...

...unemployment is a permanent fixture...

...Nevertheless, it is easier to draw up blueprints for Armageddon than to offer a means of preventing it...

...But he fails to indicate whether the shock will come from the Left or the Right, or whether it will bring about a new communism or an old fascism...

...in the 1930s, as he suggests, or to post-Weimar Germany, as I prefer, is inconsequential...

...Curiously, it does not seem to make a difference...

...Galbraith is too smart not to realize the dulling impact of his nonconclusion...

...That the problems of urban poverty are not solely a consequence of the inequitable distribution of wealth...

...The situation he describes, however partially, is quite real...

...Moreover, he has a hard time demonstrating the virtues of a culture of discontent...

...As a result, The Culture of Contentment will leave readers somewhat less than content, and a great deal more unsure of what makes John Kenneth Galbraith run...

...Still, as surely as did the Ross Perot campaign, Galbraith is voicing a widespread concern that the political system "do something...

...present output is declining...

...Willing to do neither, he ends with a thud—and an indecisive one at that...

...In 1984 he asserted that, far from being an evil empire in decline, the Soviet Union was likely to enjoy a rosy future...

...True, Galbraith's recent predictions have not stood him in good stead...

...No parallel evaluation is offered of the three times greater Soviet expenditures that spurred the U.S...

...Having said that, let me also say it would be a mistake to dismiss his latest assessment of our present and future national condition as merely the pessimistic ruminations of an old (and odd) fellow who lacks a positive view of life...

...Reviewed by Irving Louis Horowitz Hannah Arendt Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Rutgers University This book is not in the same class as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society or American Capitalism...

...Everything good that has happened in the U.S...

...Beyond that, he admits to a lack of policies and rejects any prospect of effective "remedial action"—a peculiar conclusion for a former president of Americans for Democratic Action...

...But the critical question remains, What to do...

...and run...

...The book rests upon a set of assumptions about the contentment of Americans...

...foreign policy essentially has been a series of military miniadventures such as Panama and Iraq...

...Galbraith is entitled to his pessimistic prognoses, yet since the bulk of this slim volume is given over to scenario building and futurology, one would like to know more...

...Unfortunately, this book doesn't answer it...

...One gains the impression that Galbraith would welcome virtually any jolt to the legitimacy of the system, as long as it gave liberal puritanism a reason for existence...

...Here Galbraith backs away from his earlier relish for class war and recognizes the possibility of a nasty, neofascist outcome...

...Who will take command of the explosive environment that is supposed to follow militarism, urban racial revolt, and economic decay...

...banking scandals continue to reverberate...

...From Galbraith's vantage point, though, such arguments hardly matter...

...Galbraith's tendency to identify contentment itself as the enemy, though, betrays a rasping fundamentalist liberalism reminiscent of Cotton Mather...

...And that high taxation has invariably been accompanied by low productivity and innovation, not to mention the rise of underground economies...

...One could note that real enemies still exist despite, or perhaps even because of, the collapse of Soviet Communism...

...One finds flashes of the old Galbraith cleverness, as in his "demystification" of monetary policy: "Higher interest rates discourage consumer borrowing and expenditure for home ownership and consumer durable goods, and they are presumed to discourage investment and associated spending by business enterprises...

...According to Galbraith, some "discontent and dissonance" can be heard, providing a "not inconsiderable likelihood of an eventual shock to the contentment that is the cause" of our troubles...

...The opposite policy, a resort to lower interest rates, less costly borrowing, is taken to have the reverse effect...

...From this come the restrictive effects on total spending in the economy, on aggregate demand, and ultimately the control of inflation...

...Galbraith seems to have taken a look at society through the prism of our slow recovery, and to have found nothing uplifting: Previous growth was fueled by inflation...

...everything bad that has happened has been deserved...

...and run...

...For all his championing the causes of the poor, he remains a patrician: Obviously disturbed by the rumblings of the lowermiddle class and the dispossessed, he is not quite sure whether to announce his opposition to militancy or to propose policy options that might mitigate the coming turbulence...

...Thanks to a preoccupation with shortterm comfort, most Americans passively accept high defense expenditures without regard for the relative strength of our enemies, contempt for the urban poor without regard for the social costs, and a ceiling on tax rates without regard for the discomfort of others...

...Alas, there is too little of such writing, and too much moralizing...