John Kenneth Galbraith

JKG, who was posted in an earlier note on a witticism from LBJ died today at the age of 97. The New York Times has a long and glowing reflection on his life and work as do a couple of other papers. Galbraith spent a good deal of his career at Harvard and was very popular there. He actually received his PhD from Berkeley in Agricultural Economics, although he started his academic career at a small university in his native Canada (which he described thusly - "not only the cheapest but probably the worst college in the English-speaking world. ") Throughout his life he was unapologetically liberal. He was a founder of the Americans for Democratic Action. The Boston Globe quotes one of his FBI security investigations (he was a frequent advisor to democrats including an Ambassadorship to India under Kennedy) as saying ''Investigation favorable except conceited, egotistical, and snobbish." So he was an intellectual who was committed to action. He acerbic tongue was renowned. When he was Ambassador to India he commented ''The job of an American ambassador is to maintain civil communication with the government to which he is accredited and, to the extent that personality allows, to personify the majesty and dignity of the United States. No one should suppose that this is either intellectually or physically taxing."

The Times relates a story that when he was young and in Canada his father strode atop a pile of manure (calling it the "Tory" platform) to give a political speech. Galbraith was every bit as combative as his father. The Boston Globe, his home town paper, related his theory of how to practice his profession - ''I never imagined that there was any point to being an economist if no one was aware of what you were thinking," he once said. ''Nothing so protects error as an absence of readers or understanding."

Perhaps the best known book of his many was the Affluent Society. Amartya Sen in the Times said it was so full of well quoted tidbits that it was a lot like reading Hamlett and then commenting that it was full of quotes. I found it a bit less interesting. It argued that a) affluence was destroying the fabric of the society, b) that all these consumer goods were some how bads and would destroy society and c) that all this consumption created "private opulence and public squalor" (He did know how to turn a phrase). He was a consistent supporter of more government and a firm believer in the power of government to alleviate poverty. Even after evidence mounted of the bizarre negative incentives of welfare and poverty programs he remained resolute in his belief. I finished reading a book today on political experts (by Phillip Tetlock) which compared foxes (know a little about a lot of things) and hedgehogs (know a lot about one silo of information). Tetlock makes the point that foxes are better able to make predictions - Galbraith was clearly a hedgehog. Note - the fox/hedgehog discussion is an old one that others have written extensively about - Tetlock simply used it to advance his theories on the reliability of experts. He went on to write The New Industrial State - it can be argued that book was an important foundation for the left's aversion to the power of corporations. He argued for the public purpose of economic entities - although I think that commitment confused governmental obligations and public ones.

Galbraith was combative. He was also prolific - at least three of his books were best sellers. Yet he never won the Nobel in Economics. He did win a Medal of Freedom from Clinton. He advised several presidents. He taught generations of students. so his contribution to the dialogue was significant. Even if many of his observations on economics were simply mistaken that should not diminish his contributions to policy discussions for at least seven decades. My first copy of the Affluent Society was well marked up - with comments about how most of his theory was baloney. Affluence is not a curse; corporations do not have a propensity to evil.

What intrigued me about Galbraith, even though I disagreed with most of what he wrote, was his consistent dedication to the intellectual life. He, like Hayek, believed that the narrow brand of economics practiced by many today - which ignores the human dimension for numbers, was wrong headed. But like some others of the time he was first a public figure and not an economist. Unlike Hayek or Friedman - nothing in Galbraith's writings advanced the profession of economics. Even with that his writings assisted the development of a couple of generations of liberal politicians.