The Affluent Society

by John Kenneth Galbraith

The businessman, with many exceptions, has for long been suspicious of the state—or at least of those activities of the state, the national defense being such an exception, which do not usefully provide him with markets and support to needed research and development. This, it has always been assumed, is because he is an important taxpayer and vulnerable to regulation. But we are too addicted in our social comment to this kind of mechanical economic determinism. Modern government is a major threat to the businessman’s prestige. To the extent that problems of conservation, education and social welfare are central to our thoughts, so the administrators, teachers and other professional public servants are the popular figures. As their prestige, along with that of the men who are associated with the problems and disasters of foreign policy, has increased, businessmen have reacted by pointing out that the government does not produce anything, that it is a barren whore. “Government is powerless to create anything in the sense in which business produces wealth and individuals produce ideas [and] inventions . . .”1 The case involves some rather strained argument—it makes education unproductive and the manufacturer of school desks productive—but, nonetheless, it has a position of considerable prominence, especially in the older business liturgy.