John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OCwas a Canadianeconomist, public official, and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. As an economist, he leaned toward Post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth15 October 1908
CountryUnited States of America
John Kenneth Galbraith quotes about
In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress.
The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.
The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best.
In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.
The spirit should never grow old.
Happiness does not require an expanding economy
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.
In public administration good sense would seem to require the public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize the eventual disappointment.
Some things were never meant to be recycled.
The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.
The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
World War II revealed two of the enduring features of the Keynesian Revolution. One was the moral difference between spending for welfare and spending for war. During the Depression very modest outlays for the unemployed seemed socially debilitating, economically unsound. Now expenditures many times greater for weapons and soldiers were perfectly safe. It's a difference that still persists.