audience. The dynamics of the economy and the experience of living in the consumer society remain very much the same, and I decided that respecting the integrity of the book as it was written and enabling readers to encounter it on its own terms was the best course. This new introduction is meant to serve as the bridge between the time the book was written and now. And I hope, in what I have just written, to inoculate the reader against any confusion that might arise from specific cultural referents reflecting the time when the book was first written or particular illustrative numbers that are different from those one would use today. The points remain very much the same.
Much of this book is about the vicious circles in which living in a growth-focused consumer society ensnares us and the insights and actions necessary if we are to extricate ourselves from their dynamic pull. I have spent most of my career explicating the ways that human problems organize themselves in this vicious circle fashion, both in the clinical realm, where I have applied this understanding to the development of personality and the challenges of effective psychotherapy,21 and in the larger social realm, where I have tried to elucidate how race relations in America, and by extension international and interethnic tensions around the world, show a similar vicious circle structure.22 In my focus in the present book, I aim to show how intersecting dynamics in our economy and our lives as individuals impact the larger ecological balance that supports both. In what follows, I spell out how reciprocally reinforcing features of our economy and our culture shape our perceptions of the good life and how life in the consumer economy generates desires that almost inevitably outrun what is attained. Especially central to the analysis is examination of the ways that attempting to quell our discontents via the means encouraged by the consumer society instead regenerate those discontents, leading us on a path that takes us further from the real sources of security and satisfaction and, at the same time, impacting the climate and the environment in alarming ways.
In my work as a psychologist, I have learned that any effort at change in human behavior must be rooted in finding the small seeds of new possibility that can almost always be found sprouting in the midst of the dominant pattern that occupies our attention. The tangle of individual, social, and economic forces I explicate in this book is powerful and pervasive, and in its insistent self-perpetuating momentum it is daunting. But my aim in writing the book is not to write an epitaph for our civilization. It is to point us toward an understanding that can be the foundation for new possibilities and new directions. Some possible kernels of those new possibilities may be emerging in the attitudes and habits of the generation we have come to call Millennials, those who came to adulthood in the present century. Increasing reports have appeared suggesting that Millennials are less preoccupied with buying things than other recent generations, whether homes, cars, or other accouterments previously thought essential markers of success and the good life.23 They are also more likely than previous generations to prefer living in places that are walkable and/or have good public transportation,24 patterns which place less severe strain on the environment and the climate. Whether these departures represent the beginnings of a genuine shift in our way of life or temporary accommodations to a difficult economy is a subject of debate and remains to be seen. But if this new edition of The Poverty of Affluence can in any way contribute to solidifying these encouraging signs of change, I will be especially delighted to be reaching a new generation with its message.
* Strictly speaking, personal computers were already being sold, but relatively few people yet had them; and none of them connected to the internet, which also did not yet exist.
* In standard economic theory, such miscalculations of what will bring us satisfaction or well-being (“utility”) are treated as essentially impossible (see Thaler, 2015). I will be discussing below the emergence of behavioral economics, in which the limits of human capacity to make rational decisions about the myriad choices life offers us are much more realistically considered.
* See, in contrast, the work of Robert Frank, one of the leading economists to challenge the assumption that only the absolute quantity of goods matters and that comparisons with others are irrelevant.
* The reader is likely to be wondering at this point what will happen to incomes if working hours are reduced. I shall address shortly the issue of incomes and access to goods in a world of shorter workweeks.
* It has been argued by a range of experts on the topic that in fact, one reason business leaders became receptive to the reduction in hours was that they recognized that productivity did not increase with much greater working hours because workers who were tired, bored, or angry did not work all that well or efficiently.
* Unemployment insurance is a response already in our society’s portfolio, but it is temporary, stigmatizing, and generally maintains only a portion of the previous consumption.
* I do not mean by this to suggest that income needs to be the central focus of taxation. Cornell economist Robert Frank for example, has offered detailed and thoughtful proposals for a strong emphasis on progressive consumption taxes as a better alternative. And numerous economists on both the left and the right have advocated various forms of carbon taxes, which would have the virtue of promoting cleaner energy and contributing valuably to addressing climate change.
ENDNOTES
1. Amy Chozick, “Middle Class Is Disappearing, at Least From Vocabulary of Possible 2016 Contenders,” The New York Times, May 12, 2015.
2. United States Census Bureau, “Median and Average Square Feet of Floor Area in New Single-Family Houses Completed by Location,” https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/medavgsqft.pdf
3. Edward N. Wolff, “Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze,” Working Paper No. 502, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, June 2007, p. 11.
4. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Wealth Inequality in the United States since 2013: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No, 20625, October 2014.
5. Ibid.
6. Christina Larson, “The World’s 85 Richest Are Now Worth as Much as 3.5 Billion Poorest,” Bloomberg, January 20, 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-01-20/the-worlds-85-richest-now-worth-as-much-as-3-dot-5-billion-poorest.
7. Noam Scheiber and Dalia Sussmana, “Inequality Troubles Americans Across Party Lines, a Poll Finds,” The New York Times, June 4, 2015.
8. Paul Watchel. The Poverty of Affluence (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 68.
9. Larson, “The World’s 85 Richest Are Now Worth as Much as 3.5 Billion Poorest.”
10. Daniel Gilbert. Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Vintage, 2007).
11. Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
12. Ford Motor Company, “Henry Ford’s $5-a-Day Revolution”, Ford, January 5, 1914, http://corporate.ford.com/company/history.html; Jonathan Grossman, “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Department of Labor, June 1978.
13. Truckinginfo.net, “Trucking Statistics: U.S. Statistics,”
