State Representative David Bly, District 25B

 Sunday I got word that economist John Kenneth Galbraith had passed away.  Galbraith was one of the great liberal economists of the last century.  He served as advisor to Democratic presidents from FDR to Bill Clinton and was John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to India.

His books are still important contributions to our current political debate from The Affluent Society to The New Industrial State and Economics and the Public Purpose.  Even his most recent work, The Economics of Innocent Fraud has a relevant and important perspective.  As he points out in his introduction one could not be more fortunate than to have ones arguments verified in the press by scandals like Enron.  He points out the difference between commonly held belief and reality and in so doing points to the problem of confidence in the so called 'truths' everyone claims to be believe, when in fact they are only commonly held beliefs.   

Galbraith goes on to explain that this is the predominant reason we are in the economic mess we are in where the rich get richer, the poor fall further behind and the middle class is struggling.  It is not that we are the victims of criminals but that we are the victims of convenient beliefs.  Corporate leaders and their servants believe whatever serves their purposes is right and never stop to consider beyond their own interests, unaware they are doing anything wrong.  As he says, “No clear legal question is involved. Response comes not from violation of law but from personal social belief.  There is no serious sense of guilt; more likely, there is a sense of self-approval.”  Is it that old social Darwinist view, the belief that the rich are rich because they are better?  The book concludes with a powerful statement about or current political situation:

A Final Word.  We cherish the progress in civilization since biblical times and long before. But there is a needed and indeed, accepted qualification. as I write the united sates and Britain are in the bitter aftermath of a war in Iraq We are accepting programmed death for the young and random slaughter for men and women of all ages.  So, overwhelmingly , it was in World war I and II . So more selectively, since and still at this writing in Iraq.  Civilized life, as it is called is a great white tower celebrating human achievements , but at the top there permanently a large back cloud. Human progress dominated by unimaginable cruelty and death.
    I leave the reader with the sadly relevant fact: Civilization has made great strides over the centuries in science, health care, the arts and most, if not all economic well being. But also it has given a privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality of war.  Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilized achievement.
    The facts of war are inescapable – death and random cruelty, suspension of civilized values, a disordered aftermath.  Thus the human condition and prospect as now described, as also mass poverty and starvation, can, with thought and action, be addressed.  So they have already been.  War remains the decisive human failure.

The New York Times concluded with its tribute with this:

He remained optimistic about the ability of government to improve the lot of the less fortunate. "Let there be a coalition of the concerned," he urged. "The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system." 

 Here’s what the press is saying:

John Kenneth Galbraith Dies At 97

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 30, 2006(AP) John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97.

Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.  "He had a wonderful and full life."

 Economist John Kenneth Galbraith dies
Sun Apr 30, 2006 4:07 PM ET

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - John Kenneth Galbraith, an influential liberal economist, best-selling author and former presidential advisor, died on Saturday. He was 97.

New York Times:John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society

 Financial Times: Galbraith Obituary

NPR : John Galbraiths Lasting Economic Impact 

NPR : John Kenneth Galbraith, In His Own Words

Markets, Politics and the Public Interest
John Kenneth Galbraith, a Great American
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

A great American has passed away–John Kenneth Galbraith. He was 97 years old and still involved with the issues of our time.

Galbraith's most famous book is The Affluent Society (1958). In this book Galbraith argued that Americans were good at making money, but neglectful of the wider public interest.

Alas, the same is true today. The environment always suffers from the greed of developers and a number of other well organized interest groups that pull political strings. I have seen enough in my life to know that Galbraith was right that the "free market" is not always the answer. All too often, the "free market" is merely organized interests pulling political strings behind ideological cover.

Today the greed of CEOs and short-term shareholders is destroying the American middle class. Why pay an American to do a job that can be outsourced to a foreigner for far less cost or performed by a foreigner brought in on a H-1B or L-l visa. American organizations and their public relations operatives spread disinformation that there are shortages of engineers, nurses, schoolteachers, and so on in America, and that the need has to be met by bringing in foreigners at less pay.  Read more.

Here's a conversation with  Galbraith

and his biographer's website

Quotes:  "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."

"Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory."

"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists"

"One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know."