What do you think?
Rate this book
The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture
Until the 1950s, the struggle to feed, clothe, and employ the nation drove most of American political life. From slavery to the New Deal, political parties organized around economic interests and engaged in fervent debate over the best allocation of agonizingly scarce resources. But with the explosion of the nation's economy in the years after World War II, a new set of needs began to emerge—a search for meaning and self-expression on one side, and a quest for stability and a return to traditional values on the other. In The Age of Abundance , Brink Lindsey offers a bold reinterpretation of the latter half of the twentieth century. In this sweeping history of postwar America, the tumult of racial and gender politics, the rise of the counterculture, and the conservative revolution of the 1980s and 1990s are portrayed in an entirely new light. Readers will learn how and why the contemporary ideologies of left and right emerged in response to the novel challenges of mass prosperity. The political ideas that created the culture wars, however, have now grown obsolete. As the Washington Post aptly summarized Lindsey's take on the contradictions of American politics, "Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s while Democrats want to work there." Struggling to replace today's stale conflicts is a new consensus that mixes the social freedom of the left with the economic freedom of the right into a potentially powerful ethos of libertarianism. The Age of Abundance reveals the secret formula of this remarkable alchemy. The book is a breathtaking reevaluation of our recent past—and will change the way we think about the future.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2007
21 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 16, 2023
Brink Lindsey’s Age of Abundance has some interesting ideas but would have been better in an essay instead of a rather long book.
Lindsey’s basic argument is that at some point post WW2, America got to the point where for most of its citizens, their basic material needs were assured. That led to reactions, which Lindsey summarizes in terms of two main groups – the right-wingers and the left-wingers. For the right wingers, it led to something of a religious revival and a push to stick to traditional values – although with an openness to the new economic opportunities that were available. For the left wingers, it led to a push for openness, creativity, and exploration, but also a hostile reaction to capitalism.
Lindsey claims that this conflict came out OK for us, as the left-wingers succeeded in promoting more openness and tolerance, but right-wingers succeeded in keeping the basic structure of capitalism (which is the goose that laid the golden eggs resulting in this prosperity) and a basic culture that promoted values like hard work, honesty, and thrift.
Seems pretty accurate to me, but it felt too long winded, repetitive, and meandering.
I’m also curious what Lindsey would think of the current situation. The book was written in 2007. Since then, there are new Culture War battles and less people seem to accept the basic structure of Capitalism as being a good thing. Even right-wingers seem less interested in promoting free markets and fiscal discipline. Overall I think we are drifting away from this sort of centrist/libertarian-ish “compromise” Lindsey describes.
Lindsey’s basic argument is that at some point post WW2, America got to the point where for most of its citizens, their basic material needs were assured. That led to reactions, which Lindsey summarizes in terms of two main groups – the right-wingers and the left-wingers. For the right wingers, it led to something of a religious revival and a push to stick to traditional values – although with an openness to the new economic opportunities that were available. For the left wingers, it led to a push for openness, creativity, and exploration, but also a hostile reaction to capitalism.
Lindsey claims that this conflict came out OK for us, as the left-wingers succeeded in promoting more openness and tolerance, but right-wingers succeeded in keeping the basic structure of capitalism (which is the goose that laid the golden eggs resulting in this prosperity) and a basic culture that promoted values like hard work, honesty, and thrift.
Seems pretty accurate to me, but it felt too long winded, repetitive, and meandering.
I’m also curious what Lindsey would think of the current situation. The book was written in 2007. Since then, there are new Culture War battles and less people seem to accept the basic structure of Capitalism as being a good thing. Even right-wingers seem less interested in promoting free markets and fiscal discipline. Overall I think we are drifting away from this sort of centrist/libertarian-ish “compromise” Lindsey describes.
November 17, 2009
Just a fabulous, fabulous book. The main thesis is that the same prosperity that freedom has brought enables both the left and the right to seek to eliminate freedom.
Money quote: "As a result, Americans of predominantly liberal disposition—which, these days, means the majority who are comfortable with the prevailing libertarian synthesis—are left to choose which illiberal bedfellows they dislike least. Those who are most repelled by the left’s collectivism and antipathy to middle-class values drift rightward; those who cannot stomach the religious right drift to the left. People with equal hostility to both ideological flanks are stranded in the political wilderness."
Money quote: "As a result, Americans of predominantly liberal disposition—which, these days, means the majority who are comfortable with the prevailing libertarian synthesis—are left to choose which illiberal bedfellows they dislike least. Those who are most repelled by the left’s collectivism and antipathy to middle-class values drift rightward; those who cannot stomach the religious right drift to the left. People with equal hostility to both ideological flanks are stranded in the political wilderness."
December 24, 2018
This was written in 2007, and I wonder if a book written in present-day would use the same tone.
I was rather dissatisfied with this book - I expected a bit more analysis. Instead, this felt like a primer as to the different cultural revolutions that swept to America, starting with quoting Inglehart that "mass affluence is behind the sweeping cultural changes of recent decades... material security reduces stress, and thus the appeal of inflexible moral norms."
The synopsis of the book is that:
but reading this book made me feel that the contemporary ideologies emerged due to various cultural forces, and not just because of mass prosperity. The book goes through the ideologies, and does a fair historical recounting - but it's sort of the ideology. Take the third chapter, titled "Howl", which deals with Ginsberg and Keruoac becoming the "leading voices of a radical cultural alternative" - fine, this is a good summary. But why could they do it in the face of mass prosperity? How were Ginsberg and Keruoac funded, for example?
I felt disappointed with this book; it did a good summary of events, but didn't feel explanatory. A better book could have, for example, dealt with different economic growth rates explaining the development of different right-left cultural attitudes in different states. Unfortunately, this book wasn't it.
2.5 stars
I was rather dissatisfied with this book - I expected a bit more analysis. Instead, this felt like a primer as to the different cultural revolutions that swept to America, starting with quoting Inglehart that "mass affluence is behind the sweeping cultural changes of recent decades... material security reduces stress, and thus the appeal of inflexible moral norms."
The synopsis of the book is that:
Readers will learn how and why the contemporary ideologies of left and right emerged in response to the novel challenges of mass prosperity.
but reading this book made me feel that the contemporary ideologies emerged due to various cultural forces, and not just because of mass prosperity. The book goes through the ideologies, and does a fair historical recounting - but it's sort of the ideology. Take the third chapter, titled "Howl", which deals with Ginsberg and Keruoac becoming the "leading voices of a radical cultural alternative" - fine, this is a good summary. But why could they do it in the face of mass prosperity? How were Ginsberg and Keruoac funded, for example?
I felt disappointed with this book; it did a good summary of events, but didn't feel explanatory. A better book could have, for example, dealt with different economic growth rates explaining the development of different right-left cultural attitudes in different states. Unfortunately, this book wasn't it.
2.5 stars
May 16, 2023
It is an interesting look at the evolution of American society and economy from the 1950s until now. Covers how traditionally left and right politics have reacted differently to prosperity by being pushed farther to their extremes. Calls on a greater movement towards the center.
Detailed to the point of being wordy. Lots of statistics and listing of data and dates.
Detailed to the point of being wordy. Lots of statistics and listing of data and dates.
November 5, 2017
The title really says it all. Very thought-provoking argument for free markets and freedom in general. The author appears to be clearly anti-religion, however.
January 23, 2017
I appreciated this more than any account I've yet read by a self-described libertarian. The overall narrative of the idea that we've lived in an unprecedented "age of abundance" since end of WWII, the foundations of which were laid by the industrial capitalist developments since the late 1800s, was well justified; and that the innate developments of that abundance very naturally lead to the countercultural left movement he describes as "Aquarian" (after the sixties leftist enthusiasm for the "Age of Aquarius"), which itself provoked the reactionary right wing traditionalist movement, both of which grew into what we see now as the US left-right political wings, was rather insightful. He insists that the great majority of the populace in the middle of the political spectrum hold a more libertarian perspective, which I suppose might be considered true if you use the term libertarian in a very loose sense of the word.
I appreciated that he is the first libertarian whose works I've read acknowledge that the Industrial Revolution, while ultimately enabling the Age of Abundance, cost far more for labor than it did for the bourgeoisie, and that capital did indeed seek to maintain the benefits mostly to themselves until such time as wealth became extremely abundant. He also recognizes a need for a system of social safety nets, even if they should, in his opinion, be evolved from the "welfare state" style we have now.
His contention that our modern, information age is not breaking down social bonds as has often been suggested ("Bowling Alone"), but is actually enabling far more, pointing to the proliferation of interest groups and online communities, is intriguing.
I thought his observation that our economy has evolved beyond the "big" stage--big government, big business, big labor--in the information age, enabling far more entrepreneurism with a focus on human capital, was astute. His suggestion that the increasing gap is due to a cultural lack of focus among the development of human capital, was less so. There is surely something to the idea, but his focus on that neglects how great an advantage those at the top are able to secure for themselves over the bulk of the others along the economic spectrum, no matter how focused those others might be on human capital.
Overall, a very readable and interesting perspective on the history of our modern political ideologies and economic situation. Some good things to mull over.
I appreciated that he is the first libertarian whose works I've read acknowledge that the Industrial Revolution, while ultimately enabling the Age of Abundance, cost far more for labor than it did for the bourgeoisie, and that capital did indeed seek to maintain the benefits mostly to themselves until such time as wealth became extremely abundant. He also recognizes a need for a system of social safety nets, even if they should, in his opinion, be evolved from the "welfare state" style we have now.
His contention that our modern, information age is not breaking down social bonds as has often been suggested ("Bowling Alone"), but is actually enabling far more, pointing to the proliferation of interest groups and online communities, is intriguing.
I thought his observation that our economy has evolved beyond the "big" stage--big government, big business, big labor--in the information age, enabling far more entrepreneurism with a focus on human capital, was astute. His suggestion that the increasing gap is due to a cultural lack of focus among the development of human capital, was less so. There is surely something to the idea, but his focus on that neglects how great an advantage those at the top are able to secure for themselves over the bulk of the others along the economic spectrum, no matter how focused those others might be on human capital.
Overall, a very readable and interesting perspective on the history of our modern political ideologies and economic situation. Some good things to mull over.
May 15, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
Another good book that the UNH Library saw fit to buy, even without my recommendation. I love those guys.
The subtitle on the book is "How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture". Most of the text is taken up with a very wide-ranging history of the last few decades of the US of A. It's full of telling statistics and insightful analysis.
How wide ranging is it? Let's do a sampling: page 50 concerns labor relations and regulations; page 100 tells of the imposition of Jim Crow in the south; page 150, the beginnings of the civil rights movement; page 200, the beginnings of the environmentalist movement; page 250, the economic trainwreck of the early 70's; page 300, modern TV comedy.
Most of Lindsey's history will be familiar to anyone paying attention to current events over the past few decades. But I'm pretty sure anyone will pick up on (at least) some neat trivia. For example, I found out here that Peter Coyote was a founding member of the "Diggers", a radical-anarchist drug-fueled group in the 60s Bay Area. Synchronicity: just after I read that, I noticed Coyote droning on my TV during a PBS pledge break. Times change, don't they?
The author is vice president for research at the Cato Institute. So it's not surprising that his analysis is broadly libertarian, both on economics and social issues. I'm generally very sympathetic to that view, but he doesn't beat you over the head with his ideology, so even non-libertarian readers might get through the book without throwing it across the room.
The book's final chapter is an analysis of Where We Are Today. It's very balanced: Lindsey doesn't have an optimistic thought without balancing it with a pessimistic one a few sentences later. Still, it's thoughtful and thought-provoking. Lindsey is the author of the famous (and famously derided) "Liberalitarian Alliance thesis", the idea that some sensible lefties could be brought into strategic alliances with libertarians to accomplish some limited progress on entitlements, taxes, and corporate welfare; there are some inklings of that idea here.
Lindsey's website, like his book, is also pretty good.
July 31, 2008
A great narrative charting the expansion of American society from scarcity to abundance, and how that affected the culture (and in turn their politics).
The Libertarian Synthesis is an interesting concept the author touches on that I find fascinating. That the actions and reactions spawned by 60's, which split the country into 2 sides (Aquarians and Evangelicals) brought about 2 arguments that just don't quite hold it all together, with conflicting half-truths. And now, after a back-and-forth and general liberalizing of our society...the center is now a society of those holding mainly Libertarian values, while the far left and right are the noisy mouthpieces of our politics.
I've totally been down with this argument for a while, and I loved the way he traced the social and political forces that brought us to this point.
most fascinating is in the last few pages (and this book was published 5/07)
...a reasonable prospect that conditions may eventually allow a break-out from the current ideological alignment.
Lurches in that direction have already been visible. Witness the recurrent appeal of charismatic outsiders...men who promise to transcend the partisan bickering and the old tired ideological categories. But thus far no coherent alternative has emerged, because there is no underlying movement--no distinctive, well-understood body of ideas, no mass of self-identified supporters, to combine with the appropriate political personality
...it would need to start with a forthright affirmation of the libertarian cultural synthesis--and equally forthright rejection of the left and right's illiberal baggage. A movement so grounded would probably not yield an explicitly libertarian politics, since it would need to include constituencies that incline towards more activist government.
if that ain't fucking prescient...
It's too bad most serious Libertarians have their heads up their asses. But Liberaltarians...that's the wave of the future, my friends.
The Libertarian Synthesis is an interesting concept the author touches on that I find fascinating. That the actions and reactions spawned by 60's, which split the country into 2 sides (Aquarians and Evangelicals) brought about 2 arguments that just don't quite hold it all together, with conflicting half-truths. And now, after a back-and-forth and general liberalizing of our society...the center is now a society of those holding mainly Libertarian values, while the far left and right are the noisy mouthpieces of our politics.
I've totally been down with this argument for a while, and I loved the way he traced the social and political forces that brought us to this point.
most fascinating is in the last few pages (and this book was published 5/07)
...a reasonable prospect that conditions may eventually allow a break-out from the current ideological alignment.
Lurches in that direction have already been visible. Witness the recurrent appeal of charismatic outsiders...men who promise to transcend the partisan bickering and the old tired ideological categories. But thus far no coherent alternative has emerged, because there is no underlying movement--no distinctive, well-understood body of ideas, no mass of self-identified supporters, to combine with the appropriate political personality
...it would need to start with a forthright affirmation of the libertarian cultural synthesis--and equally forthright rejection of the left and right's illiberal baggage. A movement so grounded would probably not yield an explicitly libertarian politics, since it would need to include constituencies that incline towards more activist government.
if that ain't fucking prescient...
It's too bad most serious Libertarians have their heads up their asses. But Liberaltarians...that's the wave of the future, my friends.
November 13, 2008
really interesting insights into the age of convenience, and even some about the beginnings of feminism. didn't really convince me that 'prosperity' changed our politics and culture. but did prove how abundance and convenience led to increase in the suburbanization of america.
i feel that americans have always been about bigger-better-more, and the industrial age offered us opportunities to take our consumerism to new levels of irrationality. it pushed us as a society that understood the patience inherent in working hard to achieve all the material things people want as americans [cars, houses, all the stuff along with it] throughout our lives, to a society focused on immediate gratification at all costs. we give no thought to how things are produced shipped or dealt with after disposal, to the detriment of our planet and to future generations who will have to deal with the tonnes of toxic waste we produce daily.
the author is less apocalyptic about the whole thing, but i think he glosses over that in favour of focusing on the political aspect of it. i'm still not sure if he thinks we've become more open-minded, or more traditionalist, as a result.
i might need to read this again to truly appreciate its finer points. interesting, nonetheless.
i feel that americans have always been about bigger-better-more, and the industrial age offered us opportunities to take our consumerism to new levels of irrationality. it pushed us as a society that understood the patience inherent in working hard to achieve all the material things people want as americans [cars, houses, all the stuff along with it] throughout our lives, to a society focused on immediate gratification at all costs. we give no thought to how things are produced shipped or dealt with after disposal, to the detriment of our planet and to future generations who will have to deal with the tonnes of toxic waste we produce daily.
the author is less apocalyptic about the whole thing, but i think he glosses over that in favour of focusing on the political aspect of it. i'm still not sure if he thinks we've become more open-minded, or more traditionalist, as a result.
i might need to read this again to truly appreciate its finer points. interesting, nonetheless.
July 14, 2008
This is a thought-provoking re-telling of late Twentieth Century history from a libertarian perspective. So much of the modern welfare state is based on kind of mythic-history poverty-exigency that looking candidly at our current state of affairs (e.g. the biggest health problem facing the poor in America today is obesity) undercuts many left-wing political assumptions and has a liberating feel.
The author sees a quiet libertarian revolution in the second half of the Twentieth Century and this is true enough with things like abortion rights, free speech, and sexual tolerance. But there has been no groundswell for eliminating public education, or changing foreign policy, or scaling back the welfare state, so the author is overstating the success of libertarianism overall. He also resists making the observation that the explosion of prosperity post-progessive reform and post-New Deal tends to support the idea that mixed economy can work very well, even while the liberated proletariat in purely socialist countries got to wait in line for moldy bread.
The author sees a quiet libertarian revolution in the second half of the Twentieth Century and this is true enough with things like abortion rights, free speech, and sexual tolerance. But there has been no groundswell for eliminating public education, or changing foreign policy, or scaling back the welfare state, so the author is overstating the success of libertarianism overall. He also resists making the observation that the explosion of prosperity post-progessive reform and post-New Deal tends to support the idea that mixed economy can work very well, even while the liberated proletariat in purely socialist countries got to wait in line for moldy bread.
March 20, 2014
For the first time in human history, the majority of people in our civilization don't have be concerned with starving to death on a regular basis. How does that affect our society? That's the basic premise here. I expected more analysis of our current day situation, but it's more of a history book.
Brink takes potshots at everyone throughout the book, and it's fantastic. He decries the hippies because they only get the chance to self-actualize because someone before them did the hard work producing enough stuff to keep them (relatively) affluent. He also shoots down conservatives who love freedom in an economic sense, but are repulsed by a culture that actually, you know, ACTS FREE.
He took the "Culture Wars", a highly polarizing topic, and analyzes it as only an outsider can. Unless you're currently in the trenches, it's hard not to be persuaded.
Brink takes potshots at everyone throughout the book, and it's fantastic. He decries the hippies because they only get the chance to self-actualize because someone before them did the hard work producing enough stuff to keep them (relatively) affluent. He also shoots down conservatives who love freedom in an economic sense, but are repulsed by a culture that actually, you know, ACTS FREE.
He took the "Culture Wars", a highly polarizing topic, and analyzes it as only an outsider can. Unless you're currently in the trenches, it's hard not to be persuaded.
August 31, 2010
Quite a challenge to push through this one and not sure I'm going to remember much of this book as I spent most of time asking myself, "what did he just say?". Although there were many salient points offered by the author as he drew a number of interesting parallels and was rather pragmatic, I don't like it when I'm spending an inordinate amount of time having to look up never heard words in the dictionary because an author wants to show he's really researched his material and therefore show his intellect when ofter times layman's terms would suffice. Essentially you learn that our society is now more libertarian as a result of our transition from scarcity to abundance and the cultural shifts we've gone through in the last 50 years.
May 18, 2013
Brink Lindsey exposes the broad cultural impact of our world's recent shift from subsistence to abundance. Members of developed economies are now able to pursue fulfillment instead of food, and to struggle with sources of angst that would be considered ridiculous by any previous generation. The Aquarian counter-culture of the 60's and 70's was only possible in the context of the new abundance. Downstream effects persist today, some the opposite of what the reactionaries ever intended. Overall, our politics are now relatively moderate, driven by relative comfort for the bulk of voters and an underlying libertarianism recognizable in fact more than in name.
January 11, 2008
A libertarian reading of American economic history. Like any Insert-Descriptor-Here reading of history, it suffers from overindulging in its preconceptions, but I think it gets some things spot on. And it's fairly centrist libertarian not crazy panarchist libertarian like some myselfs I know.
August 30, 2009
Finally finished this. I guess what I was expecting was a hot-tempered jeremiad against first world greed and economic Darwinism. Lindsey, though, gave me a history of the past 100 or so years. Good, even insightful, but I guess I was in the mood for a screed.
December 8, 2009
Perfect timing for this one--right before the great crash of 2008. No wonder folks like Heritage's Robert Rector are so quick to say there is no hunger crisis in the us:
http://www.heritage.org/research/welf...
http://www.heritage.org/research/welf...
August 12, 2008
Very interesting--explains how money can shape human beings, for good and also for ill.
Currently reading
August 17, 2009reading this on my kindle...very good so far (30% done)
January 9, 2014
I too found this book somewhat difficult to read. I did not feel that the overall purpose of the book was made clear enough. Much of the context gets lost within the ramblings of the author.
September 17, 2024
Läs min recension av boken "The Age of Abundance" i UNT på https://unt.se/kultur/recension/litte...
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews