How Much is Enough?

Father and son team Robert and Edward Skidelsky ask an intriguing question in their new book: How Much is Enough? We all want the “good life,” they write, but what is the right way to define it? There’s no easy answer here. Instead, the Sidelskys explore the ways humanity has tried to answer it in the past and may approach it in the future.

An economic, political, and philosophical history course all on its own, How Much Is Enough? delves into past philosophical musings, environmental debates, and economic theories that have taken on the world’s big questions. As a reader with a liberal arts background, I was familiar with much of the territory the Sidelskys cover, but they make their arguments clear enough through context that you can read this without being an expert on Keynesian economics or utopian societies.

This is a book to read slowly, underline, and mark up with your responses to the Skidelsky’s essentially conservative take on the moral obligations of society. Their bias about the “good life” and humanity’s right to it is fairly clear throughout, though strongest in the chapters on climate change. The book’s bibliography provides a terrific reading list for college-level study.