John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OC (properly /ɡælˈbreɪθ/ gal-BRAYTH, but commonly /ˈɡælbreɪθ/ GAL-brayth; 15 October 1908 – 29 April 2006), was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian, an institutionalist, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s and he filled the role of public intellectual from the 1950s to the 1970s on matters of economics.

Galbraith was a prolific author who produced four dozen books and over a thousand articles on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). He taught at Harvard University for many years. Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; he served as United States Ambassador to India under Kennedy. Due to his prodigious literary output he was arguably the best known economist in the world during his lifetime and was one of a select few people to be awarded the Medal of Freedom, in 1946, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2000, for services to economics. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.

Read more about John Kenneth Galbraith:  Postwar, Works, Honors

Famous quotes containing the words kenneth galbraith, john, kenneth and/or galbraith:

    “There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.”
    —John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    “The kind of scientist who has no room for faith in his universe is rather old-fashioned nowadays.”
    —Robert D. Andrews, and Nick Grindé. Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff)

    “Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.”
    —John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    “People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.”
    —John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)