JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH 95 



not single out waste in a product without questioning the product. We 

 cannot single out any one product without calling into question all 

 products. Thus having specifically endorsed ever more luxurious 

 standards of consumption — for this is what is meant by growth — the 

 PMPC obviously could not pursue the notion of wasteful consump- 

 tion without involving itself in a major contradiction. It made its ges- 

 ture against the automobiles and then, wisely, it stopped. 



Ill 



There are several reasons why our consumption standards have not 

 been called in question in the course of the conservation discussion 

 over the last fifty years. There is also some divergence between those 

 that are given, or which come first to mind, and those that are ulti- 

 mately operative. Thus, to recur once more to the PMPC, it simply 

 stated its belief that economic stagnation is the alternative to growth, 

 meaning uninhibited increases in consumption. No one, obviously, 

 wants stagnation. But does this argument really hold? Clearly we can 

 have different rates of growth of consumption. In other contexts we 

 are not nearly so committed to the notion of all-out increase in con- 

 sumption. In 1957 economic output was virtually constant. This level- 

 ing off of output — stagnation if I may use the pejorative term — was, 

 more or less, a goal of public policy. The purpose of the tight money 

 policy was to reduce the rate of investment spending and thus of eco- 

 nomic expansion in order hopefully to win a measure of price stability. 

 In this context we weren't so appalled by the idea of a lower rate of 

 growth — something approaching what the PMPC would have had to 

 call stagnation. As I write, in the first quarter of 1958, we have had 

 something more than a leveling off; we have experienced a rather 

 sharp reduction in output. But even this, at least in some quarters, has 

 not been regarded with great alarm. We are being told that breathing 

 spells are inevitable in the free enterprise system. 



Also, as I shall suggest in a moment, we can have patterns of 

 growth which make heavy drafts on materials and other patterns 

 which are much more lenient in their requirements. 



In any case, if our levels of consumption are dangerously high in 

 relation to the resource base, or are becoming so — and the PMPC at 



