Review: How Much Is Enough?

A review of Robert Skidelsky’s How Much Is Enough? Money And The Good Life.

I thought that the authors' scholarly analysis sounded very sophisticated, but I still found myself struggling to follow the thread of their argument (if there even was one per se). The book seemed to cover the intellectual history of the big picture point (of it all) as it relates to economic distribution, but maybe it didn’t. I wouldn’t really know and this book didn’t cure that. At the end the authors finally get around to tepidly giving some rather rough ideas about how things might be encouraged to take a turn for the better. And then it ends with no further justification or attempt to convince. The topic (as I imagined it based on the title) is interesting and worthwhile but I’m not sure if there is any useful purpose I can direct the experience of reading this book to. I will thank the authors for at least keeping it under 250 pages; with the pair of them writing like mad, I can easily imagine a book like this sporting 800 pages as is the fashion in intellectual punditry.