The Good Life and its Discontents - Hardcover

Samuelson, Robert J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812925920 ISBN 13: 9780812925920

Publisher: Crown, 1995

Synopsis

One of the country's most influential commentators attempts to explain why the richest, most powerful, and most democratic nation in the world is overcome by self-doubt and confusion. Samuelson takes a penetrating look at why Americans feel so bad when they are really doing so well, and poses the crucial question: Can America's leaders restore confidence by curbing government that has promised more than it can deliver?

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: Crown
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0812925920
• ISBN 13: 9780812925920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 293