| | How Much Is Enough? by Robert and Edward Skidelsky – review |
| | based on an article by Larry Elliott |
| 1 | | In 1928, a year before the Wall Street crash, John Maynard Keynes spoke to an |
| | audience of Cambridge undergraduates. The great economist told the students |
| | that by the time they were old men the big economic problems of the day would |
| | be solved. The capitalist system was capable of delivering such a sustained and |
| | steady increase in output, albeit in sometimes unsavoury ways, that people |
| | would eventually have all the material goods they could possibly want. They |
| | would need to toil for only 15 hours a week and could then spend the rest of the |
| | time enjoying themselves. Capitalism, Keynes argued, was a means - a rather |
| | distasteful means - to this end and, by implication, its supporters could be |
| | considered immoral. |
| | |
| 2 | | Two years later the world was sliding towards the great depression, extremism |
| | and war, but Keynes saw the crash as merely delaying the day when society |
| | would be able to meet all its needs with far less effort. In one respect, Keynes |
| | was right. 22 ; indeed, the leaps in productivity have been even greater than |
| | he predicted. But he was completely wrong in his belief that workers would ever |
| | feel satiated by their material possessions, and devote more of their time to |
| | painting, reading or watching ballet. |
| | |
| 3 | | So what would Keynes make of a world in which lavishly paid investment bankers |
| | work from dawn to dusk and then decamp at the weekend to country-house |
| | hotels where they are waited on hand and foot by a new servant class paid little |
| | more than subsistence wages? Not much, according to his eminent biographer, |
| | Robert Skidelsky, and his philosopher son Edward. In their book How Much Is |
| | Enough? they argue that the modern world is characterised by insatiability, an |
| | inability to say enough is enough, and the desire for more and more money. |
| | Economics, a narrowly focused discipline in which there is no distinction between |
| | wants and needs, has driven to the end of a cul-de-sac. |
| | |
| 4 | | The book argues that progress should be measured not by the traditional |
| | yardsticks of growth or per capita incomes but by the seven elements of the good |
| | life: health; security; respect; personality; harmony with nature; friendship; and |
| | leisure. "The overall picture is not encouraging for the advocates of growth at all |
| | cost. Despite the doubling of UK per capita income, we possess no more of the |
| | basic goods than we did in 1974; in certain respects, we possess less of them." |
| | |
| 5 | | This is perhaps a tad hyperbolic. 24 , job security is much weaker than it was |
| | at the end of the golden age of postwar prosperity and the pressure on the |
| | environment has increased. Fewer people die horrible deaths from lung cancer |
| | than they did 40 years ago, though; the bonds of friendship are as strong as they |
| | ever were (if manifested differently in a digital age); people are more aware of |
| | the need to live in harmony with nature; and in many ways Britain is a more |
| | tolerant, respectful place than it used to be. There is a danger of getting mistyeyed |
| | about a time that was not a golden age if you were poor, black or gay. |
| | |
| 6 | | That said, the main thrust of the book holds true. There is more to life than gross |
| | domestic product and it is only recently that growth at all costs has become |
| | enshrined as the goal of economic policy. We live in a country divided into |
| | workaholics who have more money than they know what to do with and millions |
| | of unemployed and under-employed citizens struggling to make ends meet on the |
| | proceeds of work in the informal economy or claiming state benefits. In the |
| | middle there are the debt slaves who constantly worry about the mortgage. When |
| | the Skidelskys say that we ought to be able to do better than this, it is hard to |
| | disagree with them. They favour a society influenced rather less by capitalism |
| | and rather more by a more social market economy. Sprinkle in a bit of Keynesian |
| | liberalism and the good society is within reach. |
| | |
| 7 | | Well, perhaps. How Much Is Enough? is a spirited polemic but it is not without its |
| | faults. The book starts and finishes well but has a long central philosophical |
| | section in which the disquisitions on Marcuse and Aristotle give the impression |
| | that the authors are showing off. They also have quite fixed views on what |
| | constitutes the good life. They approve of the opera and wine-tasting but not of |
| | watching TV, noting that Keynes's vision of middle-class culture spreading to the |
| | masses with the increase of leisure has not been realised. |
| | |
| 8 | | The main problem with this book is one of political agency. The authors make a |
| | series of sensible suggestions for how the good life could be attained: a basic |
| | citizens income, curbs on advertising to rein in consumerism; a tax on financial |
| | transactions. Where they are less convincing is in sketching out how these |
| | policies will be effected. "A sustained effort should be made to raise the share of |
| | income received by teachers, doctors, nurses and other public service |
| | professionals," they say. "This will require a higher rate of taxation and for that |
| | reason will encounter more political resistance than in countries which start with |
| | more equal income distribution." You bet it will. |
| | |
| | guardian.co.uk, 2012 |
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