Quotessence
Home / Authors / John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Economist

Filter quotes by topic

AllEconomyMenPeopleEconomicsEconomicIfsPoliticsWorldPoliticalCapitalismShouldInvestingStatesGovernmentPoorHas BeensEconomistModernProblemImportant

Famous John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

“Broadly speaking, Keynesianism means that the government has a specific responsibility for the behavior of the economy, that it doesn't work on its own autonomous course, but the government, when there's a recession, compensates by employment, by expansion of purchasing power, and in boom times corrects by being a restraining force. But it controls the great flow of demand into the economy, what since Keynesian times has been the flow of aggregate demand. That was the basic idea of Keynes so far as one can put it in a couple of sentences.”

MeanHas BeensIdeasGovernmentCoursesForceResponsibilityEconomyCoupleDemandBehaviorEconomicsFlowSentencesEmploymentExpansionRecessionsAutonomousPurchasingRestrainingKeynesPurchasing PowerKeynesianism
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image

“A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation.”

GovernmentCoursesLevelsEconomyToo MuchInfluenceEffectsPolicyMassInnovationRateIncludingComplicatedSpendingConsumersInflationBorrowingGovernment Policy
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image

“In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.”

IfsWorldWellsMayEnoughChoicesCoursesPoliticsPeaceEnjoyDecisionEconomyEconomicPolicyHorrorOne DayLuckyCapableDiscoveryCapitalismSocialismUsualPlannersEconomic PolicyEconomy And Economics
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image

“The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.”

BelieveIdeasStatesInterestUnitedPartyEffortTeachUnited StatesEconomyEconomicPeriodsSucceedInstitutionsUnionsAcceptedEnterpriseCommunistSovietDominantEconomistSoviet UnionHostileGlobal EconomyCommunist PartyEconomic Power
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image

“It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.”

MenWellsFoundLeftEconomyFailingEconomicModernSeriousNormalCapitalismPlantTendenciesEmploymentTemporaryCapitalistContinuingIdleUnemploymentEconomistEquilibriumEconomic SystemsAberrationKeynesPerfectly NormalUnderemployment
Book:The Essential Galbraith
Create image

“No politician can praise unemployment or inflation, and there is no way of combining high employment with stable prices that does not involve some control of income and prices. Otherwise the struggle for more consumption and more income to sustain it-a struggle that modern corporations, modern unions and modern democracy all facilitate and encourage-will drive up prices. Only heavy unemployment will then temper this upward thrust. Not many wish to confront the truth that the modern economy gives a choice only between inflation, unemployment, or controls.”

WayGivingDoeChoicesWishStruggleEconomyDemocracyModernPoliticianCapitalismPraiseUnionsHeavyIncomeEmploymentCorporationsTemperStableConsumptionUnemploymentInflationThrustFacilitateCombining
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image

“Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied.”

PeopleMenWayWarCountryStatesDiesUnitedNumbersPrinciplesUnited StatesEconomyHe ManCapitalismInstinctPracticalsSocialismEnterprisePanicAstonishingCrossingsUnstableRailwaySwitzerlandConcessionsPrivate Enterprise
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Create image