THE CULTURE OF CONTENTMENT

by John Kenneth Galbraith

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992, 195 pages)

Among the more perplexing ques- tions being subjected to intensive de- bate currently, especially within the liberal and Left communities are: Why is America's poverty so intractable despite the growing wealth of the country? Why does our budget deficit remain so impervious to reduction? Why has the U.S. slipped from being the leading creditor nation to the number one debtor? What is the real reason that monetary policy has so eclipsed fiscal policy as the key macro tool of U.S. economic policy? There has never been any shortage of answers to these often paradoxical questions but because the answers offered are usually particularistic in nature, they fail to provide a perspective on sys- temic malfunctions and therefore are of limited persuasive force.

In his most recent foray into the workings of American society, John Kenneth Galbraith, one of our fore- most social critics and the irreverent guru of political economy, has elabo- rated a highly insightful formulation

of the politico-economic dynamic that currently drives U.S. society, and in doing so he goes far toward providing answers to these and other contempo- rary queries about the functioning of the U.S. economy.

Dr. Galbraith builds his formula- tion around the observation that a majority of the U.S. voting population has now achieved a level of income such that preservation of its comfort- able position has become its top pri- ority. He describes this phenomenon as the emergence of a "culture of con- tentment," and argues that it sharply differentiates the political economy of today's America from that which has characterized American society in the past.

This is a relatively recent and per- haps uniquely American development, and it exists in large part because of the shrunken percentage of the U.S. electorate that actually chooses to ex- ercise its vote. These voters are clus- tered toward the upper end of the in- come range and although the "culture

114 The Review of Black Political Economy/Spring 1993

of contentment" includes many two- wage-earner families who may receive fairly modest individual salaries, the group as a whole enjoys a level of comfort such that its members are wont to make common cause with those enjoying higher incomes rather than with those receiving lesser incomes. They will, for example, refrain from support ing higher taxes on the wealthiest 20 per cent of the popula- tion (who receive 51.8 per cent of all income before taxes) in solidarity with the super rich against the common enemy: higher taxes for all.

The GOP attracts a somewhat higher income range than do the Democrats, but the bulk of Democratic voters have also attained income lev- els that place them in the contentment category. Thus, while they may ar- ticulate programs for poverty allevia- tion, the Democrats' voting constitu- ency is hardly more inclined to spend money for social programs than is the GOP's. The contented majority (of those who vote) are thus innately conservative and opposed to all mea- sures that are likely to threaten their comfort level. The most immediate of such threats are the costly programs being endlessly proposed for amelio- rating the conditions of those in pov- erty or for improving the public edu- cation system.

There are, of course, a number of heavy budgetary items which the "culture of contentment" vigorously supports because its constituents greatly benefit therefrom: "the non- means tested welfare-type programs such as Social Security, Medicare and farm subsidies; defense spending; in-

terest on the public debt; the bailout of the Savings and Loan industry. In- deed, these latter items comprise the vast bulk of the federal budget, and are the visible causes of the intransi- gence of the budget deficit. Given the votes wielded by the contented major- ity, it's easily predictable as to what programs will regularly win out in the competition for scarce budget re- sources."

Like all developed societ ies, America has always been highly de- pendent on an underclass which per- forms society's dirty but necessary jobs. In postemancipation America, this class has tended to experience fairly rapid turnover, generally mov- ing up and out within a generation, to be replaced by a new wave of immi- grants or urbanized ex-sharecroppers. This dynamic has been drastically im- peded during the past twenty years as the growth of the U.S. economy has experienced prolonged stagnation, and the underclass has become a semiper- manent rather than a generational phenomenon. The ghetto has thus be- come a place of growing social disor- der, crime and conflict. This is, to be sure, a smoldering threat to the "cul- ture of contentment," but since de- fusing it would require vast sums of money, the response has been to put bars on the windows and try to ignore it, in keeping with a very human ten- dency to prefer cheaper, short-run so- lutions over longer term, more costly approaches to problem solving.

Yet another manifestation of the "culture of contentment" has been a strong preference for using monetary rather than fiscal policy for fighting

Book Reviews 115

the inflationary tendencies exhibited by the economy during the seventies and much of the eighties. Higher in- terest rates accrue to those who have resources to lend whereas the higher taxes may not fall heavily on such persons. But this excessive reliance on monetary policy has raised the for- eign exchange value of the dollar, en- couraged a massive balance of pay- ments deficit and within a few short years transformed the U.S. from be- ing the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor, a situation that exacer- bates the difficulty of finding resources to address social needs.

Prof. Galbraith's highly readable volume is a lucid and valuable tour of the vital interactions between the politics and the economics of con- temporary U.S. society. His relentless satire consistently bites its victims and the reader is certain to find himself breaking out into laughter as the author

directs his wit toward foibles that are all too familiar. Academic economists will smile knowingly as he cites ex- amples of how the profession regu- larly manages to produce practitioners eager to create "rationales" to justify whatever policies the central authori- ties wish to pursue.

Unfortunately, Prof. Galbraith of- fers little in the way of workable pre- scriptions for extricating ourselves from the predicament he describes. One assumes that he is rather pessi- mistic as to the likelihood of our mending our ways in time to salvage the situation harmoniously, but it is not clear whether he foresees an ex- plosion of some sort, perhaps leading to reforms, or alternatively, a U.S. society gradually rotting away form within, with an outcome of a totally unpredictable nature.

Robert S. Browne