Brink Lindsey Celebrates 'The Age of Abundance'

“Denouncing the vulgar banality of consumer capitalism is a time-honored ritual. At the end of the 19th century, Thorstein Veblen offered his withering assessment of "conspicuous consumption." Since then, various denunciations have come from John Kenneth Galbraith, Herbert Marcuse, Jean Baudrillard and, more recently, Naomi Klein ("No Logo") and Thomas Frank ("One Market Under God"). The gist never changes: Material plenty is a mask for spiritual poverty; the proliferation of marketplace choices, a subtle form of tyranny…

continue reading: The Curious Problem of Having More Than You Need

Brink Lindsey discusses his forthcoming book, on the above theme, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture, in the podcast 'Defending Abundance' on this page (scroll down).