For Galbraith, advertising served another counterintuitive purpose beyond keeping the cycle of production and consumption rolling. He thought it made people worry less about inequality because, as long as they were able to purchase new consumer products once in a while, they felt that they were upwardly mobile and so closing the gap between themselves and others.

“It has become evident to conservatives and liberals alike,” he noted drily, “that increasing aggregate output is an alternative to redistribution or even to the reduction of inequality.

The principal purpose, however, has been to loosen the claw-like grasp that scarcity economics has held over our working lives, and to diminish our corresponding and unsustainable preoccupation with economic growth. For by recognizing that many of the core assumptions that underwrite our economic institutions are an artifact of the agricultural revolution, amplified by our migration into cities, frees us to imagine a whole range of new, more sustainable possible futures for ourselves, and rise to the challenge of harnessing our restless energy, purposefulness, and creativity to shaping our destiny.

That is why the influence of the middle-class ressentiment should not be underestimated. There is, of course, a substantial gap between the ivory tower and the street - but it is equally true that what happens on university campuses filters into public spaces. I mention this because research conducted in the middle of the twentieth century showed how followers of facist movements were most likely to come from the lower strata of the middle classes who, because their strivings for self-improvement were continuously blocked, were most susceptible to developing feelings of ressentiment.

The current state of higher education institutions today reminds me of the integrated steel mills that suffered a major disruption at the hands of minimills, particularly when I think of large research universities. Clayton Christensen has, of course, been talking about this issue for some time and published his ideas in the book Disrupting Class.

I’ve come to realize that there are many way that China and the United States are inversions of each other. Households save a great deal of their earnings in China, while it is really easy to borrow money or spend on credit in America. In terms of national policy, China is much more focused on the supply side of the economy: It suppresses consumption as it favours manufacturers with preferential financing and all manner of policy support. The United States, meanwhile, is focused on regulating demand, for example, by imposing rent control in expensive cities or mailing out checks to consumers during the pandemic.