American Scold - Galbraith invented a modern archetype

Reason ^ | May 1, 2006 | Jeff A. Taylor

[neverdem]

Reason Foundation    free minds and free markets

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May 1, 2006

American Scold

Galbraith invented a modern archetype

Jeff A. Taylor

It is tempting to string together a series of glib declarations from John Kenneth Galbraith's 50 years in public life, note their absurdities, and move on. That would be wrong on two counts. For one, five decades of wonkish fame buys you some wiggle room. And two, it would miss just how successful and influential Galbraith, the Canadian-born Harvard economist who influenced U.S. economic thinking for more than 60 years, was in defining the terms and style of debate on a host of policy issues.

Galbraith's style was not just to be certain of his views, but to be positively declarative, rejecting the very possibility of informed dissent. Assumptions should be as sweeping as possible so as to support the broadest possible conclusion. Take this perfect example from 1984: "Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."

Let's unpack the assumptions. The Soviet Union was successful, on its own terms, a few years before its dissolution. Western capitalist countries were not, despite all the material wealth they possessed. And, finally, Soviet labor conscription and make-work constitute full-employment.

Buried in such heavily loaded rhetoric is the key to understanding Galbraith's legacy. He was not, in fact, an economist. Nor was he an "economic sociologist," as his New York Times obit put it while defending him from "the envious and antagonistic." Galbraith was a moralist and a strident one at that.

"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," Galbraith declared. His 1958 book The Affluent Society indicted post-war American consumerism far beyond the stark utilitarian terms you might expect from FDR's former price-fixer general.

American society was not just poorly planned, it was wrong. It did not matter that the widespread privation of the previous century had passed or that the future promised ever-less back-breaking labor in exchange for the basic necessities. Galbraith found income inequality immoral. Income had to be large enough to buy "decency" on a relative scale or it was inadequate.

The echoes down to today's "living wage" movements in various American cities are fairly obvious, but Galbraith inspired a blowback with even greater implications. In 1962, Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom arrived essentially as a response to Galbraith's econo-moral critique of American society.

As Galbraith had used a thin veneer of Harvard econometrics to dispute and call into question the traditional conservative defensive line for a market economy, Hayek and the Austrian school, Friedman loaded up on government planners from the Great Depression on, charging them with causing more harm than good. The result was a dense policy playbook containing everything from school vouchers to the flat tax, and the limited government team has been running these plays ever since. Yet this playbook has only occasionally delivered victory. For that, credit Galbraith's most enduring legacy—the secular guilt-trip that questions every motive and denies every choice.

Back in 1973 Galbraith surmised that the "technostructure" of corporate managers actually manipulated consumer wants and desires. This was done primarily through deceptive advertising and outright misrepresentation, but manipulation of prices also created artificial scarcity and perceived luxury goods. People, in fact, do not really know what they want. Today this view has become so prevalent on both the left and right as to be unremarkable. Junk food, housing, transportation, clothing, entertainment, the news media—all create demands and impressions that consumers are largely powerless to overcome, much less to discern.

Desire a house in the suburbs with a nice yard? "You are just trying to keep score with a McMansion," comes the JKG refrain. Packed on an extra 20 pounds? "Agribusiness." Your 11-year-old wants belly shirt and heels? "Fashion industry." Think George Bush is a twit? "The networks."

It is a wonderfully tidy way to respond to all the abundant choice of modern America: Deny that it is choice at all.

Well played, John Kenneth. Well played.

Jeff A. Taylor writes the weekly Reason Express.

[Richard Axtell]

I used to wonder if there was something logical or valid behind liberal-left economic ideas. I no longer wonder at all.
There isn't. What there is is nothing more than rationalization of emotional moralizing, and ignorance of the unintended consequences of bad policy. Try to talk to a liberal about this, and you will find yourself wanting to talk to any nearby tree, as it would be more responsive to logic and factual evidence. May Galbraith's philosophy pass away with his physical passing, as we will all make more progress against the frustrating pointlessness of socialist thought.

[pawdoggie]

I used to like Galbraith's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", until I realized that in his ideology that was just another way of saying, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

[neverdem]

I used to like Galbraith's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"

I always saw that line attributed to JFK.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

"Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."

Galbraith. What a fool. (Is it too soon after the man's death to say that?)

[mkjessup]

"Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower."
Galbraith. What a fool. (Is it too soon after the man's death to say that?)

No, not at all. Alive or dead, Galbraith was a bloody idiot, a "useful idiot" as the Communists might say.

"Lies have to be covered up, Truth can run around naked"
- Johnny Cash, in 'The Farmer's Almanac'

[SamAdams76]

Galbraith was a typical limousine liberal. He looked down his nose at people who actually worked for a living and scolded them for aspiring to nice homes (which he derided as "McMansions") and a little material comfort that he considered to be "selfish."

Yet he himself, one of the self-important "beautiful people" who went to Harvard, lived in a yuppie-mansion in Cambridge and maintained a summer home in oh-so-trendy Vermont. This despite never doing an honest days work in his life and never once getting dirt under his manicured fingernails.

The guy was a wuss, and a commie wuss at that.

During a visit to poverty-stricken India once (back in the 1950s), he condenscendingly stated that a society begins to produce "unnecessary" goods as it becomes wealthier, with corporations creating artificial demand for their products through advertising. In other words, he was saying that selfish Americans should be more like the poor of India, wading around in pools of filth and wearing rags and living in hovels. Of course, "beautiful people" like himself, being the "Harvard educated" self-important snobs that they are, should be treated "more deferentially."

Good riddance. But his legacy lives on in insufferable people like Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Barbara Streisand.

[robowombat]

You are right on the money. JKG was a rude insufferable snob who loathed ordinary Americans. A fact of which he celebrated in his autobiography and demonstrated in his interactions with Harvard non-academic staff and trades people in Cambridge.

[Ranald S. MacKenzie]

Galbraith. What a fool tool.

There.

[R.W.Ratikal]

John Kenneth Galbraith was a typical wealthy, dedicated Marxist. Galbraith was an intellectual who had a twisted mind. JKG rode in his Rolls Royce limo to give speeches against capitalism to dopey university students for large lecture fees. Galbraith never had an honest job in his entire life. He lived off the earnings of others.

Like all communists Galbraith did great harm to the nation. Galbraith was a major influence in bringing about what Nobel Prize Winning economist Milton Friedman said was the 50 percent socialization of America.

We are far better off now that he has finally gone to that great Kremlin Wall in the sky.

[piasa]

This economic dolt’s son is currently backstabbing Hamid Karzai for the Red President...