for them without—on a world scale—a good deal of economic growth.
This does not mean, however, that further growth in the developed countries will contribute much to the well-being of the world’s poor. As things stand now, the developed nations use up or appropriate far more than their share of the earth’s resources. Growth in the developed nations would exacerbate, not relieve, that problem. Moreover, the striving after more that is the essence of a growth economy does not breed generosity. The percentage of our gross national product that now goes to foreign aid is minuscule. If we continue to believe that we do not have enough ourselves, we are unlikely to increase our contribution very much. It is not difficult to imagine that with a more steady state economy—and a concomitant psychology of contentment rather than increasing wants—the absolute amount of our contribution might be greater even though our gross national product, as typically measured, would be less.*
It must also be recognized that, for better or worse, we tend to be the model toward which the less developed nations strive. It is not easy to understand the problems and discontents of a consumer society from the vantage point of genuine deprivation. If we set a material standard that is increasingly hard to measure up to, we make the task of catching up that much more difficult.
Realistically, affluence as we have tended to conceive of it is beyond the reach of most of the world. To imagine a billion Chinese using resources and polluting the air and water at the rate we do, and in addition 700 million Indians, 400 million Latin Americans, 500 million Africans, and numerous other peoples as well, is to recognize that our present notions of what constitutes the good life absolutely require that most of the world be poor. Only by changing the way we use resources and define our needs is there even a chance for all the world’s billions to prosper.
If we shift our focus to domestic concerns, to the poor within the affluent societies, the inappropriateness of a “rising tide” solution is even greater. The misery of those at the bottom of our society is not due simply to a lack of goods. It has elements of real material deprivation, to be sure, but it is also social and psychological. It is the invidious quality in their lives that particularly constitutes their poverty; it is having less than everyone else in a society that continually redefines and upgrades what are regarded as necessities for a decent life, and that through advertising and the media continually trumpets that one ought to have this or that that one had hardly thought of before. Increasing the size of the pie, without changing the relative size of the slices, will do nothing to alter this invidious sense of oneself. No matter how much “more” those at the bottom get in this way, they will still have “less” than the rest of us. And being low man on the totem pole is painful no matter how high the pole.
The misery of those in our ghettos is not all a matter of invidious comparison, of course. There are certainly some absolute features of ghetto life that require correction and that might be improved by a “rising tide.” Replacing crumbling, poorly heated homes infested with rats and roaches would be more possible in times of economic expansion and would contribute to well-being regardless of relative position. Certainly we should do all in our power to achieve this. Jobs too are more available in times of economic growth, and no one doubts that unemployment is one of the central causes of despair among the poor and minority population.
But even here, simply increasing the size of the pie may not have much beneficial effect. First of all, it is not at all clear that ghetto housing would be much of a priority even if “the economy” was “growing.” We are far too prone to ask how much we are producing rather than what.
The same goes for jobs, in a slightly different way. It is not enough simply to provide jobs. Jobs without dignity, jobs that do not permit a sense of self-respect or a feeling that one can live well by working hard are not a great benefit. Elliot Liebow, in Tally’s Corner, has provided a compelling account of the devastating social consequences of offering jobs at a level of pay that leaves people feeling they have no future even if they work full time.25 In a society where many can work their way into a life of substantial comfort, giving work to a minority at marginal levels is a self-defeating exercise. Even if we lift the level of all, so that low-level jobs seem to pay more compared to current standards, if they remain substantially below what most people expect, and below a newly risen level of what seems standard, they will not make much of a dent in the despair.
Richard Easterlin, in a widely cited report on the relation between economic growth and happiness, draws the following conclusions from the evidence available from studies in the United States and throughout the world:
In all societies, more money for the individual typically means more individual happiness. However, raising the incomes of all does not increase the happiness of all. The happiness-income relation provides a classic example of the logical fallacy of composition—what is true for the individual is not true for society as a whole.
The resolution of this paradox lies in the relative nature of welfare judgments. Individuals assess their material well-being, not in terms of the absolute amount of goods they have, but relative to a social norm of what goods they ought to have, [italics in original].26
There are more cars and television sets in the ghetto today than there once were in comfortable middle-class neighborhoods. Yet anger, misery, and despair are rampant. The pie has grown, but it hasn’t really helped much. So long as those at the bottom are accorded markedly less than the rest of us—both in respect and in their share of the goods we are all taught to clamor for—they will feel poor. Growth is no substitute for greater equality. It may be tempting to think that growth can provide an easy way out of facing questions about the justice of present arrangements, but such questions will not go away. Growth proponents pose as hard-headed realists. But their vision of buying off the poor with the crumbs from their table is in fact a dangerously naive fantasy, no matter how sugar-coated the crumbs or grand the table.
* The number of older people (and probably, therefore, the number of retired) is likely to continue to increase for a while. But when the “baby boom” generation enters its economic prime, the percentage of younger, less skilled workers in the work force should decrease substantially.
* I am not considering here the possibility of a nuclear war, which would of course plunge us far indeed below 1958 levels of comfort, and which is made more likely by the very habits of mind I am criticizing in this book.
* It is a shameful fact that for a minority of our population this is not the case—though even here the difference between American “poverty” and Third World “subsistence” is important to understand if one is to be helpful (see below)
* I will have more to say later about the limitations of such measures as gross national product and how they lead us astray.
* Some argue that we help developing nations most effectively, and least paternalistically, not by giving aid but simply by trading with them—that it is the essence of trade that it benefits both parties to it. Chapter Twelve will examine more closely the difficulties with such thinking.
THREE
The Unperceived Realities of the Consumer Life
IN THE WORDS OF NOBEL economics laureate Herbert Simon, the basic model of economics posits that each person has “a complete and consistent system of preferences that allows him always to choose among the alternatives open to him; he is always completely aware of what his alternatives are; there are no limits on the complexity of the computations he can perform in order to determine which alternatives are best.”1 Most economists agree that such a description of human behavior is not realistic but regard it as a close enough approximation to be useful. Doubtless for certain purposes it is.
