HOW MUCH SHOULD 



A COUNTRY CONSUME? 



^ John Kenneth Galbraith 



Conservationists are unquestionably useful people. And among the 

 many useful services that they have recently rendered has been that 

 of dramatizing the vast appetite which the United States has devel- 

 oped for materials of all kinds. This increase in requirements we now 

 recognize to be exponential. It is the product of a rapidly increasing 

 population and a high and (normally) a rapidly increasing living 

 standard. The one multipUed by the other gives the huge totals with 

 which our minds must contend. The President's Materials Policy 

 Commission^ emphasized the point by observing that our consump- 

 tion of raw materials comes to about half that of the non-Communist 

 lands, although we have but 10 per cent of the population, and that 



JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, Professor of Economics at 

 Harvard University, is also a prolific author of books and articles dealing with 

 the nation's economy. Among the former are American Capitalism, A Theory 

 of Price Control, The Great Crash, and, published this year, The Affluent 

 Society. From 1943 to 1948 he was a member of Fortune's Board of Editors, 

 and previously was Deputy Administrator of the Office of Price Administra- 

 tion, Director of the Strategic Bombing Survey, and Chief Economist of the 

 American Farm Bureau Federation. Mr. Galbraith was born in lona Station, 

 Ontario, in 1908. He received his B.S.A. at the University of Toronto in 1931, 

 his Ph.D. at the University of California in 1934, and was a student at Cam- 

 bridge in England during 1937-38. 



1 References here are to Resources for Freedom (Washington: U.S. Govern- 

 ment Printing Office, June 1952). Summary of Volume I, hereinafter cited as 

 PMPC, Summary. 



89 



