Background
Galbraith was born in 1908 Iona Station, Ontario, Canada to Canadians of Scottish descent, Sarah Catherine Kendall and Archibald "Archie" Galbraith, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada, and was raised in Dunwich Township, Ontario.
Diplomat economist public official
Galbraith was born in 1908 Iona Station, Ontario, Canada to Canadians of Scottish descent, Sarah Catherine Kendall and Archibald "Archie" Galbraith, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada, and was raised in Dunwich Township, Ontario.
He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (then part of the University of Toronto; now, the University of Guelph) and graduated with distinction in 1931.
He went on to study agricultural economics at the University of California, receiving his Ph. D. in 1934 after submitting a dissertation on public expenditures in California counties.
He also was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University of Newfoundland at the fall convocation of 1999.
An outspoken critic of U. S. involvement in Vietnam, he campaigned on behalf of the presidential ambitions of Senators Eugene McCarthy (1968) and George McGovern (1972).
Later he worked in the campaigns of Congressman Morris Udall (1976) and Senator Edward Kennedy (1980).
Galbraith's major intellectual contributions lie in the trilogy The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973).
Other than his main trilogy, and perhaps The Theory of Price Control, Galbraith's American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952) stands out in importance.
Galbraith coupled the new economics of John Maynard Keynes with the New Deal corporatist view, as did other Institutionalists of the time, notably C. E. Ayres and Allan G. Gruchy.
With this book Galbraith's interest in power and his strong dissent from the neoclassical synthesis which was maturing at that time were set.
Galbraith argued that such assumptions are not met in the actual economy, are unlikely to ever be met, and probably should not be met.
The Affluent Society examined the continuing urgency that affluent societies attach to higher consumption and production.
The general explanation for this paradox, familiar to students of Veblen, is that obsolete ideas are held over from one historical period to another.
These ideas persist not by inertia alone but also because they are convenient to powerful vested interests.
With its emphasis on the role of culture and history in economic life, and especially its review of the debilitating effects of an invidious pecuniary culture which seemingly had no higher social purpose than expanding material welfare, The Affluent Society gave a much needed awakening to the American Institutionalist school of economics.
The book also influenced both the Great Society program and the rise of the American "counterculture" in 1960.
In The New Industrial State Galbraith expanded his analysis of the role of power in economic life.
A central concept of the book is the revised sequence.
The conventional wisdom in economic thought portrays economic life as a set of competitive markets governed ultimately by the decisions of sovereign consumers.
In this original sequence, the control of the production process flows from consumers of commodities to the organizations that produce those commodities.
It does not apply to the market system in the Galbraithian dual economy.
In the industrial system, however, comprised of the 1, 000 or so largest corporations, competitive price theory obscures the relation to the price system of these large and powerful corporations.
The book also filled a very pressing need in the late 1960.
The conventional theory of monopoly power in economic life maintains that the monopolist will attempt to restrict supply in order to maintain price above its competitive level.
This obscurantism prevents economists from coming to grips with this governing structure and its untoward effects on the quality of life.
Galbraith employed what he called "the test of anxiety" in this attack on conventional economics.
He argued that any system of economic ideas should be evaluated by the test of anxiety - that is, by its ability to relate to popular concern about the economic system and to resolve or allay this anxiety.
Galbraith contended that conventional economic thought failed the test of anxiety and again offered his basic model from The New Industrial State as an alternative approach to understanding the contemporary economy. After the years he served in both the American and Canadian governments, Galbraith returned to scholarly activity, extensive travel, and writing, using Harvard University as his home base.
In 1947 he was one of the liberal founders of the Americans for Democratic Action.
After working prominently as a speechwriter in the presidential campaigns of Senator Adlai Stevenson, Galbraith went on to chair the Democratic Advisory Council during Dwight D. Eisenhower's Republican administration.
That this power is exercised in the shortsighted interest of expanding commodity production and the status of the few is both inconsistent with democracy and a barrier to achieving the quality of life which the new industrial state with its affluence could provide.
In Galbraith's view, the principal function of market relations in this industrial system is not to constrain the power of the corporate behemoths but to serve as an instrument for the implementation of their power.
On September 17, 1937, Galbraith married Catherine Merriam Atwater, whom he met while she was a Radcliffe graduate student. Their marriage lasted for 68 years. The Galbraiths resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had a summer home in Newfane, Vermont. They had four sons.