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John Kenneth Galbraith, Order of Canada|OC (born
October 15, 1908) is the most widely-read 
economics|economist of the twentieth century. The
Canadian-born author of four dozen books and over
one thousand articles was on the faculty of
Harvard University from 1934 to 1975 (where he
remains a professor emeritus).  He served in the
administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry
Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
 In 1961, Kennedy appointed him ambassador to
India, where he served until 1963. Although he is
a former president of the American Economic
Association, Galbraith is considered something of
an iconoclast by many mainstream economists
because he eschews mathematical modeling in favor
of non-technical political economy.  He is also an
"old-fashioned" John Maynard Keynes|Keynesian with
progressive values and a gift for writing.  His
work includes scores of popular books on economic
topics in which he describes ways in which
economic theory does not always mesh with real
life. Publication in 2004 of a highly-praised
biography, http://www.johnkennethgalbraith.com 
John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics,
His Economics has renewed widespread interest in
his career and his ideas.

==Life== 

Galbraith was born in Iona Station, Ontario. He
earned his B.S. degree from the Ontario
Agricultural College (then affiliated with the
University of Toronto, and now the University of
Guelph) in 1931, and then received an M.S. (1933)
and Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D. (1934) from the
University of California at Berkeley.
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/galbrait
h/bio.html 

During World War II, Galbraith was America's
"price czar", charged with keeping inflation from
crippling the war effort.  He served brillliantly
as deputy head of the Office of Price
Administration. At the end of the war, he was
asked to carry out a survey of US and allied
strategic bombing, and concluded that it served no
use and did not shorten the war. After the war, he
became an advisor to post-war administrations in
Germany and Japan. 

Galbraith served as editor of Fortune
(magazine)|Fortune magazine from 1943 until 1948.
In 1949, Galbraith was appointed professor of
economics at Harvard University. 

He was a friend of President John F. Kennedy and
was appointed by Kennedy as Ambassadors from the
United States|U.S. ambassador to India from 1961
to 1963. There he attempted to aid the Indian
government with developing its economy. While in
India, he helped establish one of the first
computer science departments at the Indian
Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. 

In 1972 he served as president of the American
Economic Association. In 1997 he was made an
Officer of the Order of Canada.

Galbraith is married to Catherine Atwater, whom he
met while she was a Radcliffe College|Radcliffe
student. They have three sons. They reside in
Cambridge, Massachusetts and have a summer home in
Newfane, Vermont.

Galbraith's son James K. Galbraith is a prominent
(and iconoclastic) economist.

==Works==
In American Capitalism: The concept of
countervailing power, a seminal work published in
1952, Galbraith outlines how the American economy
in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of
big business, big labour, and an activist
government.  He contrasted this with the previous
pre-depression era where big business had free
rein over the economy.  

In another work, The Affluent Society, which
became a bestseller, Galbraith outlines his view
that to be successful the United States would need
to make large public investments in items such as
highways and education.  In this work, he says, he
coined the phrase "conventional wisdom."  In The
New Industrial State (1967), he argues that very
few industries in the United States fit the model
of perfect competition. A third related work was
Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), in which
he expanded on these themes by discussing, among
other issues, the subservient role of women in the
unrewarded management of ever-greater consumption,
and the role of the technostructure in the large
firm in influencing perceptions of sound economic
policy aims . In A Short History of Financial
Euphoria (1990), he traces financial bubbles
through several centuries, and cautions that what
currently seems to be "the next great thing" may
not be that great and may have quite irrational
factors promoting it. 

==Quotes==
* "Faced with the choice between changing one's
mind and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everybody gets busy on the proof."
* "If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will
pass through to feed the sparrows." - in relation
to Trickle-down theory|trickle-down economics
* "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under
communism, it's just the opposite."
* "The only function of economic forecasting is to
make astrology look respectable."
* "The modern conservative is engaged in one of
man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that
is, the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness."
* "If all else fails, immortality can always be
assured by spectacular error."
* "It is a well known and very important fact that
America's founding fathers did not like taxation
without representation. It is a lesser known and
equally important fact that they did not much like
taxation with representation."
* (Having been asked how he managed to write so
much) "I wake up early, have a good breakfast, and
begin."
*  "Humility is not always compatible with truth."

==Partial bibliography==

* Modern Competition and Business Policy, 1938.
* A Theory of Price Control, 1952.
* American Capitalism: The concept of
countervailing power, 1952.
* The Great Crash, 1929, 1954.
* The Affluent Society, 1958.
* The Liberal Hour, 1960
* The New Industrial State, 1967.
* The Triumph (a novel), 1968.
* Ambassador's Journal, 1969.
* Economics, Peace and Laughter, 1972.
* Power and the Useful Economist, 1973, AER
* Economics and the Public Purpose, 1973
* Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, 1975.
* The Age of Uncertainty (also a BBC 13 part
television series), 1977.
* Annals of an Abiding Liberal, 1979.
* A Life in Our Times, 1981.
* A Tenured Professor, 1990.
* A Journey Through Economic Time, 1994.
* The Good Society: the humane agenda, 1996.
* The Essential Galbraith, 2001.
* The Economics of Innocent Fraud, 2004.



==See also==

* Liberalism
* List of liberal thinkers
* The Best and the Brightest

== External links ==
* The most comprehensive biography of Galbraith
http://www.johnkennethgalbraith.com
johnkennethgalbraith.com 
* Other
biographieshttp://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios
/Galbraith.html econlib.org 
*
http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/G/Galbr
ait.html Short online Galbraith biography