Idealism's Price

All week Washington and the nation were preoccupied with Richard Nixon's budget and economic message, with the pain of inflation and the fear of recession. Through all the talk about billions and trillions, and about the size and direction of future growth, rang echoes of the President's State of the Union message of the week before. "In the next ten years," Nixon said in one remarkable passage, "we shall increase our wealth by 50%. The profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50% richer in a real sense, 50% better off, 50% happier?"

It is startling for any American President, let alone a Republican of Nixon's background and character, to raise such a doubt about traditionally defined economic growth. The idea of almost infinite expansion has always been a part of the national faith. Now, even in the White House, there is a disposition to heed the Thoreauvian advice: "Simplify!"

But who is to simplify what, and how? At the very moment when the U.S. is beginning to question its old materialist certainties, it is also facing urgent new demands for a better society --which can hardly begin to be financed without enormous continued material growth. Nothing is quite so expensive as idealism; that paradox may well shape the politics of the 1970s.

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