The Essential Galbraith

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HMH, Oct 9, 2001 - Business & Economics - 336 pages
“Graceful and often witty” insights from the legendary economist, drawn from his most influential works (Library Journal).
 
The Essential Galbraith includes key selections from the most important works of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the most distinguished writers of our time—from The Affluent Society, the groundbreaking book in which he coined the term “conventional wisdom,” to The Great Crash, an unsurpassed account of the events that triggered America’s worst economic crisis. Galbraith’s new introductions place the works in their historical moment and make clear their enduring relevance for the new century. The Essential Galbraith will delight old admirers and introduce one of our most beloved writers to a new generation of readers. It is also an indispensable resource for scholars and students of economics, history, and politics, offering unparalleled access to the seminal writings of an extraordinary thinker.

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Page 161 - The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection 1 of the state.
Page 226 - The appropriate subjects of passionate contemplation and communion were a beloved person, beauty and truth, and one's prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge.
Page 195 - To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy and France there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the political reorganisation of the working men's party.
Page 33 - They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. And, above all, they must not be contrived by the process of production by which they are satisfied. For this means that the whole case for the urgency of production, based on the urgency of wants, falls to the ground. One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants.
Page 90 - James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958...
Page 42 - The line which divides our area of wealth from our area of poverty is roughly that which divides privately produced and marketed goods and services from publicly rendered services. Our wealth in the first is not only in startling contrast with the meagerness of the latter, but our wealth in privately produced goods is, to a marked degree, the cause of crisis in the supply of public services. For we have failed to see the importance, indeed the urgent need, of maintaining a balance between the two.
Page 34 - ... sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class...

About the author (2001)

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a critically acclaimed author and one of America’s foremost economists. His most famous works include The Affluent Society, The Good Society, and The Great Crash, 1929. Galbraith was the recipient of the Order of Canada and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was twice awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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