The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement - Softcover

Samuelson, Robert J. Ker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679781528 ISBN 13: 9780679781523

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997

Synopsis

A New York Times Business Book Bestseller

"Shrewd and optimistic. . . . [The Good Life and Its Discontents] combines first-rate analysis with persuasive historical, political and sociological insights." —The New Republic

Today Americans are wealthier, healthier, and live longer than at any previous time in our history. As a society, we have never had it so good. Yet, paradoxically, many of us have never felt so bad. For, as Robert J. Samuelson observes in this visionary book, our country suffers from a national sense of entitlement—a feeling that someone, whether Big Business or Big Government, should guarantee us secure jobs, rising living standards, social harmony, and personal fulfillment.

In The Good Life and Its Discontents, Samuelson, a national columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post, links our rising expectations with our belief in a post-Cold War vision of an American utopia. Using history, economics, and psychology, he exposes the hubris of economists and corporate managers and indicts a government that promises too much to too many constituencies. Like David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd and John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, the result is a book that defines its time—and that is sure to shape the national debate for years to come.

"A smart, balanced epitaph for an era—with a few clues for what's ahead." —Business Week

"Lucid [and] nonsectarian . . . Samuelson traces how the reasonable demand for progress has given way to the excessive demand for perfection." —The New York Times

About this title

Review:

Why is it that Americans, who by most objective standards have never had it so good, (longer lives, easier jobs, more money, more personal fulfillment, less discrimination) think the nation is going to hell in a handbasket? Wealthier and freer than ever before, Americans focus on crime, family breakdown, and the depressed economy. Newsweek and Washington Post writer Robert J. Samuelson looks at history, sociology, the media, and political promises as he studies this strange paradox. Americans, he theorizes, became overconfident following World War victories and strong economic growth periods. An "Age of Entitlement" developed in which Americans believe the government, big business, the world, owes them...jobs, money, health care, security. A fascinating analysis of the modern American psyche, The Good Life and Its Discontents offers some ideas for change. Read it and decide if the "American Dream" has become the "American Fantasy."

From the Back Cover:

Today Americans are wealthier, healthier, and live longer than at any previous times in our history. As a society, we have never had it so good. Yet, paradoxically, many of us have never felt so bad. For, as Robert J. Samuelson observes in this visionary book, our country suffers from a national sense of entitlement--a feeling that someone, whether Big Business or Big Government, should guarantee us secure jobs, rising living standards, social harmony, and personal fulfillment.

In The Good Life and Its Discontents, Samuelson, a national columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post, links our rising expectations with our belief in a post-Cold War vision of an American utopia. Using history, economics, and psychology, he exposes the hubris of economists and corporate managers and indicts a government that promises too much to too many constituencies. Like David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd and John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, the result is a book that defines its time--and that is sure to shape the national debate for years to come.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679781528
• ISBN 13: 9780679781523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352