REFLECTIONS

...Unless we can begin to help the electorate see that growth-oriented policies have brought us pollution and inequality, but precious little contentment, it is our problems that are most likely to grow...

...At the same time, we would all have the blessings of full employment, a three-day weekend every week of the year, and the health benefits resulting from reduced reliance on polluting industries to provide jobs...

...By sharing available jobs rather than attempting to create new ones, we can let people participate in the economy whether it is growing or not...

...Reducing the workweek from forty hours to thirty-six, for example, would mean increasing the work force by 10 per cent to accomplish the same tasks...

...The failure to deliver promised satisfaction is not the only problem growth poses to our well-being...

...REFLECTIONS Paul L. Wachtel Better than Growth In 1958, when the United States was widely hailed as "the affluent society," 9.5 per cent of American households had air conditioning, about 4 per cent had dishwashers, and fewer than 15 per cent had more than one car...

...The biggest problem with relying on growth to meet the needs of the disadvantaged is that it covertly assumes the perpetuation of inequality...

...We are all familiar with the serious health threats associated with our obsession to produce more and more—seepage of deadly chemicals into our Paul L. Wachtel is distinguished professor of psychology at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York...

...poisoning of our rivers by industrial waste...

...Why, then, do we persist in committing ourselves to a path that brings us little real satisfaction and has such harmful consequences...

...The poor in America suffer as much from inequality as from absolute deprivation...

...Whether clothed in liberal or conservative rhetoric, it is a version of the trickle-down approach in which accumulation of still more by the haves is supposed to yield beneficial side effects for the have-nots...

...Somehow, we mustered sufficient incentive for considerable growth back when the highest tax brackets claimed as much as 70 to 90 per cent of income, but now we are told that it takes a marginal tax rate of no more than 30 per cent to induce investors to do anything productive...

...There are complex psychological factors that help account for our responsiveness to the call to "get America moving again," but the main reason for our refusal to let go of the growth imperative is that our jobs seem to depend on it...

...The sense of having enough must be like the horizon—constantly receding as it is approached...

...Most Americans would agree that access to a job by every individual who is able to work is a desirable social goal...

...This article is adapted from a chapter in "Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the '90s," edited by Marcus Raskin and Chester Hartman, to be co-published this spring by South End Press and the Institute for Policy Studies...

...Historically, the growth solution has been offered as an alternative to redistribution...

...leaching of toxic wastes into our soil...

...In the name of growth, we are left with budget shortfalls that further shrink the programs for the poor...

...Shouldn't we be "realistic" and advocate policies that are more likely to be attainable, given the electorate's present views...

...acid rain that ruins life in our lakes and now seems to be affecting human health...

...Direct investment in housing, education, and the programs that will enable the chronically poor to enter the mainstream of society, along with a commitment to assure a genuine living wage for all, are the means of ending the shame of poverty in America...

...Of course many Americans need to be better fed and better housed, to receive better health care and education, to have better job opportunities...

...For a growth society to function, people must be made to feel discontented with what they have...

...Even a slight revision in our notion of what constitutes full-time work would substantially increase the supply of jobs...

...Yet we have learned to live with them by employing psychological mechanisms of denial and avoidance...

...And most of us feel that our goal should be not just a job but a "full-time" job...

...There is a widely held assumption that only an expanding economy can afford to finance the construction of schools, hospitals, and housing for the needy or to correct the results of past discrimination and deprivation...

...But these urgent needs will not be met by a general growth in the economy which offers the poor the same small portion of the new product that they have of present output...

...If we take the position implicit in the growth philosophy—that we will not be able to accomplish this until we are richer—we will find that somehow we never quite get there...

...Some will argue that a shift in the direction I have suggested might improve the quality of American middie-class life, but that a growth economy is indispensable if we are to meet the needs of the poor...

...The burden on advocates of alternatives to growth, therefore, is to persuade Americans that a life of increased leisure will more than compensate for a reduction in income...

...Further, the ways in which our society gears up to maximize growth tend to conflict with any attempt to redirect resources toward pressing human needs—even if the resources are more abundant...

...the hazards of nuclear power, both in the disposal of radioactive waste and in the ever-present possibility of a Three Mile Island or Chernobyl...

...If those now unemployed were properly trained, this would virtually eliminate unemployment without requiring any growth at all, while providing more leisure to millions of workers...

...And what we deny most of all is that these problems are the very essence of growth, and that growth means they will continue to intensify at an exponential rate...

...Our society has succeeded all too well in fostering the attitudes indispensable to maintaining growth: Other countries may have begun to overtake us in manufacturing goods, but none comes near us in manufacturing desire...

...If we are serious about addressing the needs of the disadvantaged, we must stop relying on the vain hope that filling the needs of those who command the most dollars will somehow help the poor...

...In 1980, when Ronald Reagan's successful Presidential bid was based largely on a sense that Americans were suffering economically, the percentage of homes with air conditioners had quintupled, the percentage with two or more cars had about tripled, and the percentage with dishwashers had increased by more than 700 per cent...

...Here again it is useful to remind ourselves that in 1957—just a year before publication of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society—Americans reported a level of satisfaction with their lives that has yet to be surpassed...

...The per-capita gross national product is considerably higher now than it was at the time of the War on Poverty, yet we are much more inclined today to say that we "can't afford" social programs...

...In terms of the standards that have prevailed for centuries, most of us work "part-time...

...At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, workweeks of sixty, seventy, even eighty hours were not uncommon...

...destruction of the ozone layer by fluorocarbons, increasing the risk of skin cancer and cataracts...

...There were many reasons for that apparent contradiction, from the confusion in people's economic thinking brought on by inflation to a decline of America's dominant role in the world...

...it is seen as a compromise or stop-gap solution...

...In fact, some of the slack in employment resulting from a turn away from environmentally harmful economic activity would be picked up not just by job sharing but by building parks, athletic facilities, and theaters, and by creating jobs associated with the productive use of leisure...

...But one thing should be clear: The relation between economic growth and the experience of well-being is far less simple and direct than we usually assume...

...It is not just a matter of income...

...Obviously, it will be difficult to persuade people to follow the no-growth course I have described...

...Reducing the workweek was a major goal of reformers for many years, and gradually they achieved the current standard of a forty-hour week...

...Indeed, the very nature of a society organized around growth tends to undermine any feeling of contentment and satisfaction...

...That question reminds me of the old story about a drunk looking for his keys near a lamppost: When asked if he had lost them there, he replied, "No, I lost them down the block, but the light is better here...

...But now we seem to have become fixated at that level...

...But our notion of what constitutes full-time work has become rather rigid and short-sighted...

...With some exceptions, part-time work is generally accorded low status...

...pollution of the air by exhaust from millions of automobiles and smokestacks...

...That results simply in inequality at a higher level...

...His books include "The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life," "Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy," and "Action and Insight...

...The amount of economic growth in the interval had been astounding, yet indicators of Americans' sense of well-being showed a significant drop...

...people need the self-respect and respect from others that are part of being a contributing member of society...

...water supply...

...Growth is the lamppost to which our politicians, liberal and conservative, are drawn, but it is not where we will find the solution to our society's problems...

...Why do we continue to support political candidates who promise (regardless of their ability to do so) that they will foster high rates of growth...

...Yet there is a way of extricating ourselves from the deadly connection between jobs and environmental degradation...

...Given the growth that has since occurred, the average American who is working full-time could reduce his or her working week from forty hours to thirty-two and still enjoy a higher per-capita income than prevailed in that year of contentment...

...Within a steady-state economy such an approach would, of course, mean a reduction in income for those working fewer hours...

...The list seems endless...

...Further compensating for the loss of income would be greater investment in community facilities to meet the needs of a quality-of-life economy...

...We know about these dangers, and most of us know they are likely to shorten our lives and cause debilitating illness...

...In the present climate, only a minority would be willing to forgo income to achieve more leisure...