Economist John Kenneth Galbraith dies
Reuters.com By Jason Szep (h)
BOSTON (Reuters) - John Kenneth Galbraith, an influential liberal economist, best-selling author and former presidential advisor, died on Saturday. He was 97.
A Harvard professor emeritus and advisor to presidents Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, Galbraith died at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where was admitted two weeks ago, his biographer said.
“He had been in failing physical health for several years but his mind was incredibly alert right up until the last couple of months,” Harvard economist and biographer Richard Parker, who was with Galbraith when he died, told Reuters.
The Canadian-born economist, one of the towering economic thinkers of the century, often found himself at odds with the mainstream ideas of the day but delighted in his stubborn defense of principle.
A lifelong Democrat, Galbraith saw the widening gap between the richest and the poorest as a threat to economic stability and a “moral crime,” said Parker, author of “John Kenneth Galbraith : His Life, His Politics, His Economics.”
Galbraith’s best-selling work, “The Affluent Society,” published in 1958, advocated large government investment in parks, transportation, education and other public amenities to narrow disparities between rich and poor. [more]