The Imperatives of Consumer Demand (as published in the Consumer Society)
Author(s)
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Abstract
A high level of production has been the keystone of effective economic security. There remains, however, the task of justifying the resulting flow of goods. The result has been an elaborate and ingenious defense of the importance of production as such. It is a defense that makes the urgency of production largely independent of the volume of production. Thus a sense of urgency has been transferred from a world in which more production meant more food for the hungry, more clothing for the poor, and more houses for the homeless to a world where increased output satisfies the craving for more elegant automobiles, more exotic food, more erotic clothing, and more elaborate entertainment. Although the economic theory that defends these desires, and hence the production that supplies them, has an impeccable (and, to an astonishing degree, even unchallenged) position in the conventional wisdom, it is illogical and meretricious as well as even dangerous.
