John Kenneth Galbraith

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John Kenneth Galbraith, OC , Ph.D , LL.D (born October 15, 1908) is one of the most influential American economists of the twentieth-century, a Keynesian, and an institutionalist, with progressive values and a gift for writing accessible, popular books on economic topics in which he takes delight in describing ways in which economic theory does not always mesh with real life. The Canadian-born author of four dozen books and over one thousand articles was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1934 to 1975 (where he remains a professor emeritus). His book, The Affluent Society (1958), which became a bestseller, outlines how post-World War II America was becoming wealthy in the private sector but remained poor in the public sector, lacking social and physical infrastructure, and perpetuating income disparities. Galbraith served in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1961, Kennedy appointed him ambassador to India, where he served until 1963.

Although he is a former president of the American Economic Association, Galbraith is considered something of an iconoclast by many economists because he values non-technical political economy as opposed to relying solely on mathematical modeling. His work includes several books on economic topics (some of which were bestsellers in the late 1950s and during the 1960s) in which he describes ways in which economic theory does not always mesh with real life.

Publication in 2004 of a biography, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics [1] by his friend and fellow economist Richard Parker, has renewed widespread interest in his career and his ideas.

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Life

Galbraith was born in Iona Station, Ontario and was raised in Dutton. He went on to earn his B.Sc degree from the Ontario Agricultural College (then affiliated with the University of Toronto, and now the University of Guelph) in 1931, and then received an MA (1932) and Ph.D in Economics (1934) from the University of California at Berkeley. [2] In 1937, he became a United States citizen.

During World War II, Galbraith was America's "price czar", charged with keeping inflation from crippling the war effort. He served as deputy head of the Office of Price Administration. At the end of the war, he was asked to carry out a survey of US and allied strategic bombing, and concluded the costs outweighed the anticipated benefits and did not shorten the war. After the war, he became an advisor to post-war administrations in Germany and Japan. Galbraith served as editor of Fortune magazine from 1943 until 1948. In 1949, Galbraith was appointed professor of economics at Harvard University.

During his time as an advisor to President John F. Kennedy, he was appointed as U.S. ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. There he attempted to aid the Indian government with developing its economy. While in India, he helped establish one of the first computer science departments at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. In 1972 he served as president of the American Economic Association. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2000 he was awarded the U. S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Galbraith is married to Catherine Atwater, whom he met while she was a Radcliffe student. They have three sons; a fourth son is deceased. They reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts and have a summer home in Newfane, Vermont. At 97, Galbraith is one of the few living advisors to President Franklin Roosevelt. There is currently speculation, fueled by comments made by former U.S. president Bill Clinton, that Galbraith's health is in a rapidly declining state.

Galbraith's son James K. Galbraith is a prominent progressive economist; his son Peter W. Galbraith has been a U.S. diplomat and is a widely published commentator on American foreign policy particularly in the Balkans and the Middle East.

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Works

In American Capitalism: The concept of countervailing power published in 1952, Galbraith outlined how the American economy in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of big business, big labour, and an activist government. He contrasted this with the previous pre-depression era where big business had relatively free rein over the economy.

In his most famous work, The Affluent Society (1958), which became a bestseller, Galbraith outlined how post-World War II America was becoming wealthy in the private sector but remained poor in the public sector, lacking social and physical infrastructure, and perpetuating income disparities.

He also critiqued the assumption that continually increasing material production is a sign of economic and societal health. Because of this Galbraith is sometimes considered one of the first post-materialists. In this book, he coined the phrase "conventional wisdom."

The Affluent Society contributed (likely to a significant degree given that Galbraith had the ear of President Kennedy) to the "war on poverty," the government spending policy first brought on by the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson.

In The New Industrial State (1967), Galbraith argues that very few industries in the United States fit the model of perfect competition. A third related work was Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), in which he expanded on these themes by discussing, among other issues, the subservient role of women in the unrewarded management of ever-greater consumption, and the role of the technostructure in the large firm in influencing perceptions of sound economic policy aims.

In A Short History of Financial Euphoria (1990), he traces financial bubbles through several centuries, and cautions that what currently seems to be "the next great thing" may not be that great and may have quite irrational factors promoting it.

Many of Galbraith's best known works are controversial to many economists, particularly to those of the classical liberal, or Austrian schools who disagree with many of his assertions.

He is an important figure in 20th-century institutional economics, and provides perhaps the exemplar institutionalist perspective on Economic Power. (source: Political Economy: The Contest of Economic Ideas, 2002, by Frank Stilwell)

Galbraith cherished The New Industrial State and The Affluent Society as his two best. Template:Harvard citation

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Quotes

  • "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."
  • "If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows." - in relation to trickle-down economics
  • "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
  • "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
  • "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
  • "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."
  • "It is a well known and very important fact that America's founding fathers did not like taxation without representation. It is a lesser known and equally important fact that they did not much like taxation with representation."
  • (Having been asked how he managed to write so much) "I wake up early, have a good breakfast, and begin."
  • "Humility is not always compatible with truth."
  • "People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."
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Bibliography

See also List of Articles by John Kenneth Galbraith.
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See also

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External links

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Sources

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References

  1. {{Harvard reference

| Surname=Adams | Given=Philip | Title=Interview on Radio National, Late Night Live | Publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation | Year=1999 | URL=http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/stories/s64155.htm }}. Accessed 17 Jan 2006.

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