To the Editor:

One wishes that Oscar Gass [“The Political Economy of the Great Society,” Oct. ’65] were as fastidious as he is sanguine. Then, perhaps, he would have considered the content, as well as the theory, of the economic miracle which Lyndon Johnson seems likely to perform. No doubt we shall all soon be richer than we dared dream ten years ago and with enough left over to beautify even the Negroes, if only in the spirit that we have recently voted to hide our junkyards: for ten billion or so a year we can, no doubt, and should, get the poor out of sight and possibly out of mind, too.

But I wonder whether there is really as much difference as Mr. Gass thinks between our present arrangements and the situation in 1896: whether we have not simply multiplied our plutocracy with as little regard now as was shown then for the kind of society that such a class brings with it. Great riches are, I don’t doubt, an absolute good and making, or better yet having, a living precedes for most people every other consideration. Perhaps Mr. Gass does indeed speak for American opinion when he says that as for the rich, why shouldn’t they have two houses before the poor have even one? But, despite the wishes of the majority, does this provide even the rich—to say nothing of the others—with a satisfactory society? Is it of no concern to Mr. Gass that our high standard of living is of such low average quality? Or worse, that we fatten ourselves through the production of useless and dangerous armaments, produce millions of cars each year, but, in our cities, can barely find transportation home at night; or that our schools fail so badly?

The list of grievances is, of course, long and familiar. But it seems to me elementary that a political economist must take such grievances into account: otherwise he becomes a bookkeeper. Or does Mr. Gass mean that the role of the state is merely to bloat the body politic with no regard for the grotesque consequences? I am not, of course, so innocent as to expect that such exquisite considerations will trouble the sleep of our public servants. But Mr. Gass, whom I admire, is another matter and his uncritical compliance troubles me. Equalitarianism is no doubt a delusion of the infantile Left. But there is an infantile pragmatism, too, which is not so admirable either.

Jason Epstein
New York City