Famed Economist Galbraith Dies - 經濟

Associated Press
APRIL 30, 2006


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor
who won world-wide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician
and witty chronicler of the affluent society, died on Saturday night,
his son said. He was 97.

Mr. Galbraith died of natural causes at 9:15 p.m. at Mount Auburn Hospital,
where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.

"His mind was wonderful, right up until the end," he said.

During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to
Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was
John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India.

Mr. Galbraith, who was outspoken in his support of government action to
solve social problems, became a large figure on the American scene in the
decades after World War II.

"He had a wonderful and full life," Alan Galbraith said.

One Harvard colleague, Henry Rosovsky, often tells how he once took his car
to a mechanic in New Jersey in 1966 and mentioned that he taught at Harvard.

"Ah," the mechanic said to Mr. Rosovsky. "Do you happen to know Professor
Galbraith?"

One of his most influential books, "The Affluent Society," was published in
1958.

It argued that the American economy was producing individual wealth but
hasn't adequately addressed public needs such as schools and highways.
U.S. economists and politicians were still using the assumptions of the world
of the past, where scarcity and poverty were near-universal, he said.

"The total alteration in underlying circumstances has not been squarely faced,"
he wrote. "As a result, we are guided, in part, by ideas that are relevant to
another world. .. We do many things that are unnecessary, some that are unwise,
and a few that are insane."

In 1999, a panel of judges organized by the Modern Library, a book publisher,
picked "The Affluent Society" as No. 46 on its list of the century's 100 best
English-language works of nonfiction.

"He's an amazingly imaginative and creative and hard-working person," fellow
economist and longtime friend Paul Samuelson said in 1994. "There's no day
that goes by that he doesn't write every morning, and it adds up to a lot."

Mr. Galbraith also was known for his theories on countervailing forces in the
economy, where groups such as labor unions were needed to strike a political
and social balance.

Richard Neustadt, a Harvard colleague who also served as an aide to presidents
Kennedy and Truman, said Mr. Galbraith demonstrated how "you have to empower
people directly before they could fight for themselves."

Mr. Galbraith, greeted by the Great Depression when he graduated from college,
also had "much more confidence in the ability to work out of economic
difficulties and do so with the help of government," Mr. Neustadt said.

Mr. Galbraith's prose won admiration at the very top. When he was ambassador
to India, President Kennedy enjoyed his prose so much that he insisted on
seeing all Galbraith's cables, "whether they were directed at the president
or not," Mr. Neustadt said.

He was one of America's best-known liberals, and he never shied away from the
label.

"There is no hope for liberals if they seek only to imitate conservatives,
and no function either," Mr. Galbraith wrote in a 1992 article in Modern
Maturity, a publication of the American Association of Retired Persons.

"In the end, it is the liberals who save the conservatives," he wrote,
insisting that capitalism couldn't survive without social programs such as
public housing, unemployment benefits and welfare for the helpless poor.

When Bill Clinton won the presidency in November 1992, Mr. Galbraith commented:
"This gives me some hope for the economy. .. I think Clinton will present a
substantive program for putting people to work through infrastructure work,
and he'll get his tax increase because he's had a big win."

He was occasionally an informal adviser for President Clinton.

After his retirement from Harvard in 1975, Mr. Galbraith gained fresh
recognition as host of the British-made television series, "The Age of
Uncertainty." His book under the same title was a best-seller, as was
"Almost Everyone's Guide to Economics."

Among his other books were "The Great Crash," 1955, and "The Culture of
Contentment," 1992. He returned to the theme of the Crash of 1929 in a January
1987 Atlantic Monthly article that correctly predicted that year's market
plunge by citing the parallels of the two eras.

In 1988, he and Soviet economist Stanislav Menshikov wrote "Capitalism,
Communism and Coexistence: From the Bitter Past to a Better Prospect."
The book is a compilation of discussions conducted at Galbraith's summer
home in Townsend, Vt., about socialism and capitalism. His 1996 book,
"The Good Society," outlined his blueprint for enriching America economically
and socially, while his 1999 book, "Name-Dropping: From FDR On," was a
lighthearted look at his encounters with everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt
onward.

"It is not usual for a man past his 90th birthday to write a book that is
as fresh and lively as the work of a 30-year-old. But John Kenneth Galbraith
is not a usual man, and he has done it," The New York Times wrote about
"Name-Dropping."

Globe-trotting was a favorite activity of Mr. Galbraith, who spent time
touring India during his tenure as ambassador. He wrote a factual account of
his India years as well as a novel, "The Triumph," concerning what he called
"an uncontrollably funny institution," the U.S. State Department.

From Cambridge to Tokyo, the 6-foot, 7-inch Mr. Galbraith was an avid reciter
of dry limericks and pungent, outrageous humor, often at the expense of
American society.

Noting that by the law of aerodynamics, the bumblebee in principle cannot fly,
Galbraith once remarked, "If all this be true, life among bumblebees must bear
a remarkable resemblance to life in the United States."

He was an ardent worker, often hibernating for several months at his summer
home in the Vermont mountains to do nothing but write. His secretary in his
Harvard office would warn those trying to contact him -- "on penalty of death"
-- to call him only between noon and 1 p.m., when he took his lunch break.

Mr. Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada.

After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1931, Mr. Galbraith
moved to the United States where he earned his Ph.D. in economics from the
University of California. He taught at Harvard from 1934 to 1939 and at
Princeton University from 1939 to 1942, then worked in the federal Office of
Price Administration during the war years.

Mr. Galbraith returned to Harvard in 1948, remaining active on the faculty
until his retirement.

He was the recipient of the Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Truman in
1946, and another one from President Clinton in 2000. The professor also
served as president for a term of the American Economic Association.

Mr. Galbraith was married in 1937 to Catherine Atwater. They had three sons,
Alan, Peter and James.

Services haven't yet been scheduled, said Alan Galbraith, a partner in a
Washington, D.C. law firm.


--