Interview with John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith dided last week, and I feel like most people know his name and little else about him. He was, at least nominally, an economist but more accurately remembered as a politican who worked for five US Presidents, serving as the Head of Wartime Price Controls during World War II and JFK's ambassador to India. He was the social planner that other economists only write about. The first quasi-economics book I ever read was The Affluent Society, which is not great economics but it is good social commentary critical of the role of material goods in American society. He believed that new levels of wealth among Americans would not make us happier (this was in the 50s). He worried that the role of the public sector was underrated, and that the obsession with building products like the biggest, fastest automobile corroded at American life by creating ''private opulence and public squalor.'' His willingness to criticize peoples' ability to make decisions for themselves won him more disdain in Economics departments accross the country than any other economist will ever boast.
He was appreciated not becuse he was a brilliant theoretical economist, but an economist with great insight into the American political system, a system from which most economists--by choice or circumstance--are ostricized. He was unusually popular for an ambassador, and Salman Rushdie explains that, "the period that John Kenneth Galbraith was ambassador to India, back in the 60s, was one in which intelligent people still wanted to be involved in politics." I can wholeheartedly reccomend a more obscure book of his, The Triumph, a piece of satire about the State Department's clumbsy efforts to develop the ficticious banana republic, Puerto Santos.
Here is an interview he gave in, yes, Esquire:
A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.
Giving an opinion that people don't want to hear can work both ways. If it's a person you like, it can be very hard. If it's a person for whom you have a major distaste, it can be extremely enjoyable.
My mother died when I was very young, and my father was the dominant force in the family. In southern Ontario, he would have been called a political boss. In good Galbraith fashion, he took his eminence for granted. The most important lesson I received from him was that the Galbraiths had a natural commitment to political adventure.
I would hope I laugh quite a few times a day. I don't seek to add to the solemnity of life.
For any sensible person, money is two things: a major liberating force and a great convenience. It's devastating to those who have in mind nothing else.
Modesty is an overrated virtue.
One of the characteristic features of John E Kennedy was his wonderful commitment to the truth. We had breakfast together on the day I left to be ambassador to India in 1961. The New York Times was on the table and there was a story on the front page about the new ambassador to India. Kennedy pointed to it and said, "What did you think of that story?" which, needless to say, I had read. It wasn't unfavorable. I said I liked it all right but I didn't see why they had to call me arrogant. Kennedy said, "I don't see why not. Everybody else does."
I have no capacity to cook. It's a field of ignorance which I have carefully cultivated.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was good on great issues or small. A great war. A great depression. He presided over both. No question about it--he's the person who most impressed me. In my life, he had no close competitor.
I met Winston Churchill once. I went to a gathering that he assembled one night for a discussion on European union. I was principally impressed by the way his wife grabbed his arm every time he reached for another drink.
I've always thought that true good sense requires one to see and comment upon the ridiculous.
Kitty and I were married in 1937. No question--there is a secret to maintaining a marriage over time: Each partner must systematically subordinate himself or herself to the other. That is the only formula for a happy marriage.
Is it good to have friends whom you don't agree with? Temporarily. But it has always been my purpose to get them to change their minds.
I have managed most of my life to exclude religious speculation from my mode of thought. I've found that, on the whole, it adds very little to economics.
The terrible truth with which we must all contend is that the day may come when nuclear arms fall under the control of some idiot someplace in the world. And that will be the day of reckoning.
I've long been an admirer of Adam Smith, who's greatly praised by conservatives--who unfortunately have never read him. They would be shocked to find some of the things Smith advocates.
Strong government, to some extent, is in response to huge problems.
In richer countries such as ours, I want to see everybody assured of a basic income.
Kennedy sent me to Vietnam in 1961, and I concluded from that visit that this was a hopeless enterprise. The jungle was something with which we could not contend.
I saw John Kennedy on the Cape a few weeks before his death. We spent a day together. Much of that was on a) that he was going to get out of Vietnam, and b) the pressures that he was under from the military.
LBJ and I were both from rural backgrounds--he in Texas and I in Canada. That was the origin of a closer relationship than if I had spent my life as a Harvard elite. We'd been friends for many years, back when he was in Congress. It was very sad that we clashed on Vietnam, but it was an overriding issue. Johnson had one answer which was not entirely unpersuasive. I recall his exact words: "Ken, if you knew what I have to do to contend with the military, you would be glad for what I do." The pressures of the military were very powerful. More powerful than most of us then realized.
If I had to pick out perhaps the greatest achievement that I've seen in all my years, it is in the diminishing role of race and discrimination. We have made greater progress there than I ever anticipated.
A shield against nuclear weapons is foolish. It owes much to the fact that the people advocating it are the people who would be benefiting from the effort.
How much money should a man carry in his wallet when he goes out of the house? I never thought of that.
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0F15FE3A5B0C738FDDAD0894DE404482
http://www.esquire.com/features/learned/060501_mwi_galbraith.html
He was appreciated not becuse he was a brilliant theoretical economist, but an economist with great insight into the American political system, a system from which most economists--by choice or circumstance--are ostricized. He was unusually popular for an ambassador, and Salman Rushdie explains that, "the period that John Kenneth Galbraith was ambassador to India, back in the 60s, was one in which intelligent people still wanted to be involved in politics." I can wholeheartedly reccomend a more obscure book of his, The Triumph, a piece of satire about the State Department's clumbsy efforts to develop the ficticious banana republic, Puerto Santos.
Here is an interview he gave in, yes, Esquire:
A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.
Giving an opinion that people don't want to hear can work both ways. If it's a person you like, it can be very hard. If it's a person for whom you have a major distaste, it can be extremely enjoyable.
My mother died when I was very young, and my father was the dominant force in the family. In southern Ontario, he would have been called a political boss. In good Galbraith fashion, he took his eminence for granted. The most important lesson I received from him was that the Galbraiths had a natural commitment to political adventure.
I would hope I laugh quite a few times a day. I don't seek to add to the solemnity of life.
For any sensible person, money is two things: a major liberating force and a great convenience. It's devastating to those who have in mind nothing else.
Modesty is an overrated virtue.
One of the characteristic features of John E Kennedy was his wonderful commitment to the truth. We had breakfast together on the day I left to be ambassador to India in 1961. The New York Times was on the table and there was a story on the front page about the new ambassador to India. Kennedy pointed to it and said, "What did you think of that story?" which, needless to say, I had read. It wasn't unfavorable. I said I liked it all right but I didn't see why they had to call me arrogant. Kennedy said, "I don't see why not. Everybody else does."
I have no capacity to cook. It's a field of ignorance which I have carefully cultivated.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was good on great issues or small. A great war. A great depression. He presided over both. No question about it--he's the person who most impressed me. In my life, he had no close competitor.
I met Winston Churchill once. I went to a gathering that he assembled one night for a discussion on European union. I was principally impressed by the way his wife grabbed his arm every time he reached for another drink.
I've always thought that true good sense requires one to see and comment upon the ridiculous.
Kitty and I were married in 1937. No question--there is a secret to maintaining a marriage over time: Each partner must systematically subordinate himself or herself to the other. That is the only formula for a happy marriage.
Is it good to have friends whom you don't agree with? Temporarily. But it has always been my purpose to get them to change their minds.
I have managed most of my life to exclude religious speculation from my mode of thought. I've found that, on the whole, it adds very little to economics.
The terrible truth with which we must all contend is that the day may come when nuclear arms fall under the control of some idiot someplace in the world. And that will be the day of reckoning.
I've long been an admirer of Adam Smith, who's greatly praised by conservatives--who unfortunately have never read him. They would be shocked to find some of the things Smith advocates.
Strong government, to some extent, is in response to huge problems.
In richer countries such as ours, I want to see everybody assured of a basic income.
Kennedy sent me to Vietnam in 1961, and I concluded from that visit that this was a hopeless enterprise. The jungle was something with which we could not contend.
I saw John Kennedy on the Cape a few weeks before his death. We spent a day together. Much of that was on a) that he was going to get out of Vietnam, and b) the pressures that he was under from the military.
LBJ and I were both from rural backgrounds--he in Texas and I in Canada. That was the origin of a closer relationship than if I had spent my life as a Harvard elite. We'd been friends for many years, back when he was in Congress. It was very sad that we clashed on Vietnam, but it was an overriding issue. Johnson had one answer which was not entirely unpersuasive. I recall his exact words: "Ken, if you knew what I have to do to contend with the military, you would be glad for what I do." The pressures of the military were very powerful. More powerful than most of us then realized.
If I had to pick out perhaps the greatest achievement that I've seen in all my years, it is in the diminishing role of race and discrimination. We have made greater progress there than I ever anticipated.
A shield against nuclear weapons is foolish. It owes much to the fact that the people advocating it are the people who would be benefiting from the effort.
How much money should a man carry in his wallet when he goes out of the house? I never thought of that.
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0F15FE3A5B0C738FDDAD0894DE404482
http://www.esquire.com/features/learned/060501_mwi_galbraith.html
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