In 1958, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society, a book examining America’s post- World War II economy, centered around rising consumerism. In the field of economics, typical measures of prosperity include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP), mainstream measures that obscure the cultural, social, and historical aspects of the economy’s functioning. Within the publication, Galbraith addresses the need to measure the necessity of public and private consumption, alongside the environmental implications, stressing the correlation to massive amounts of waste and environmental degradation. The Affluent Society stresses the need to analyze the reality of the economic status, and how much production is truly necessary, referencing economist Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of conspicuous consumption and pecuniary emulation. Galbraith argues that the entire framework of economic theory has been centered around solving scarcity, but the reality of America has moved far beyond this. Galbraith’s argument that mainstream economics and understandings of its inner workings were outdated emphasized the active harm of these theories. He coined the term “conventional wisdom”, describing how societies like the United States cling to comforting economic ideas and systems like capitalism, even after failing such large quantities of people, entrenching social hierarchies that leave millions suffering. Galbraith’s book introduces ideas of the dependence effect–the idea that affluent economies are reliant on consumer dependence as opposed to independent desires, reframing the economy to be centered around manufactured ideas of prosperity. Galbraith’s piece showcases his hatred towards advertising, as it serves as the inventor and driver of consumer “needs”. His diagnosis of private opulence and public squalor addresses how frequently Americans drive luxurious cars down potholed roads, buy the newest iPhone when schools are failing, and accumulate private goods while shared public infrastructure withers. Together, these ideas from Galbraith present a new framing of the central question of economics, moving away from “how can we produce more?” to “what is all this really for?”, marking an incredibly disruptive shift in economic intellectual theory for modern thought.
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