John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-born American economist and public servant. A leading scholar of the American Institutionalist school, he is one of the most famous economists of the post-World War II era.
Born in Iona Station, Ontario, and educated at the universities of Toronto, California and Cambridge, he immigrated to the US in 1931. In 1939, he became assistant professor of economics at Princeton and held various administrative posts before becoming professor of economics at Harvard 1949–75. He was US ambassador to India 1961–63.
A Keynesian economist, Galbraith advocated government spending to stimulate the economy. He criticized American society’s obsession for consumer goods, arguing that a greater portion of wealth should be spent on infrastructure, education, and other improvements shared by the public.
Galbraith was also known for the literary excellence of his writing on public affairs. His works include American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952,) The Great Crash (1955,) The Affluent Society (1958,) The Liberal Hour (1960,) The New Industrial State (1967,) The Age of Uncertainty (1977,) which was made into a BBC television series, The Anatomy of Power (1983,) The Culture of Contentment (1992,) and The Good Society (1996.)
Galbraith also wrote his autobiography, A Life in Our Times (1981.) He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice—in 1946 and 2000.
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Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Science
If anything is evident about people who manage money, it is that the task attracts a very low level of talent, one that is protected in its highly imperfect profession by the mystery that is thought to enfold the subject of economics in general and of money in particular.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Money
Few things are more tempting to a writer than to repeat, admiringly, what he has said before.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Writers
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Society, Organization
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economics
We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Twentieth Century
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
—John Kenneth Galbraith