A worringly large number of years after graduating from my first degree, I have finally accomplished something perhaps I should have done at the time. Admittedly it doesn't seem to have done me too much harm, but I can at last now claim to have fully got to grips with it. My special subject in final year was on the culture of affluence, Britain in the 1950s and 1960s – and I unashamedly loved it. The politics, the social and cultural changes, and even, to a lesser extent, the actual economics.
And now, finally, I can say I've read what was probably the most influential economic text of the period, John Kennet Galbraith's The Affluent Society. Light bedtime reading it probably is not, but it was pretty accessible, which was fine by me. It gave a basic overview of the development of economic thought (useful for simpletons such as myself), before going on to explain the current problems of the existing system, at least from the author's perspective. Although first published almost 60 years ago now, it was interesting to see how little has changed in that period. Indeed, few of the problems have been rectified and if anything, they have been exarcerbated.
Still, it was interesting to understand more about how theories fit in with practice and the historical precedents which are used and have been applied over time with varying degrees of success. Mr Galbraith was clearly a wise man who had an exceptional grasp of his subject, not least in the fact he was able to make it relatively accessible to a lay reader. Just a shame that his message and ideas seem not to have been picked up on by those with the ability to do something about how we live.
Book number: 92
Title: The Affluent Society
Author: John Kenneth Galbraith
Category: Non-fiction
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