John Kenneth 1xbet online games login
Economist
From the 1950s through the 1970s, John Kenneth Galbraith was one of the most widely read economists in the United States. One reason is that 1xbet online games login wrote so well, with the ability to turn a clever phrase that made those 1xbet online games login argued against look foolish. Galbraith's first major book, published in 1952, is American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power. In it 1xbet online games login argued that giant firms had replaced small ones to the point where the perfectly competitive model no longer applied to much of the American economy. But not to worry, 1xbet online games login added. The power of large firms was offset by the countervailing power of large unions, so that consumers were protected by competing centers of power.
Galbraith made his biggest splash with his 1958 book, The Affluent Society, in which 1xbet online games login contrasted the affluence of the private sector with the squalor of the public sector. Many people liked that book because of their view that Galbraith, like Thorstein Veblen before him, attacked production that was geared to "conspicuous consumption." But that is not what Galbraith did. In fact, Galbraith argued that "an admirable case can still be made" for satisfying even consumer wants that "have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins." His argument against satisfying all consumer demands is more subtle. "If the individual's wants are to be urgent," 1xbet online games login wrote, "they must be original with himself. 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. ... One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants"
Friedrich Hayek made the most fundamental criticism of Galbraith's argument. Hayek conceded that most wants do not originate with the individual. Our innate wants, 1xbet online games login wrote, "are probably confined to food, shelter, and sex." All other wants we learn from what we see around us. Probably all our aesthetic feelings-our enjoyment of music and literature, for example-are learned. So, wrote Hayek, "to say that a desire is not important because it is not innate is to say that the whole cultural achievement of man is not important."
Galbraith's magnum opus is his 1967 book, The New Industrial State, in which 1xbet online games login argued that the American economy was dominated by large firms. "The mature corporation," wrote Galbraith, has "readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys.... Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be".
The evidence has not been kind to 1xbet online games login 's thesis. Even our largest firms lose money if they fail to produce a product that consumers want. The U.S. market share of GM, for example, one of 1xbet online games login 's favorite examples of a firm invulnerable to market forces, had fallen from about 50 percent when 1xbet online games login wrote the book to less than half that by 2005.
Galbraith was born in Canada and moved to the United States in the 1930s. 1xbet online games login earned his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at the University of California at Berkeley. 1xbet online games login was one of the chief price controllers during World War II as head of the Price Section of the U.S. government's Office of Price Administration. Unlike almost all other economists, Galbraith had defended permanent price controls. In 1943 Galbraith left the government to be on the editorial board of Fortune. After the war 1xbet online games login directed the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, whose main finding was that saturation bombing of Germany had not been very effective at slowing down German war production. In 1949 1xbet online games login became an economics professor at Harvard, where 1xbet online games login had been briefly before the war. Galbraith was also politically active. 1xbet online games login was an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy's ambassador to India, and president of Americans for Democratic Action. 1xbet online games login was president of the American Economic Association in 1972.
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