Economic Legends and Household Gods
JR., ADOLF A. BERLE
WRITER and WRITING Economic Legends and Household Gods The Liberal Hour. By John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton Mifflin. 197 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Adolf A. Berle Jr. Assistant Secretary of...
...Pointing out with some acerbity that none of the first three is an effective possibility, he concludes that if inflation really is an enemy, public intervention must be invoked...
...We are not going back to household-production or small-scale industry, just as we are not going to revive square-rigged ships and village pumps...
...a fourth (the only really effective line) is to control wages and prices by public intervention...
...Galbraith opens his barrage by attacking the economic legends, goes right through the gamut, and ends with a few parting shots at the household gods of his New England home and his native Canada...
...This volume puts together in sequence a series of essays published separately...
...Otherwise unpleasant consequences of tasks left undone will eventually tackle the United States...
...They have crippled these but they are not checking inflation...
...Giving to the American economy the qualities it needs—continuity, predictability, productivity— and assuring that it does what must be done—providing esthetics and education as well as cleaning up the unsavory social messes in parts of the country—means doing a great many things...
...Meanwhile, the most prosperous country in the world has been unable to avoid business cycles because it suffered from difficulties: Its income was unequally distributed...
...The free price system, uninhibited competition, the renaissance of the states, the gold standard . . . are all advocated by individuals who would be appalled were they to succeed...
...Productive forces are becoming more, not less, complex...
...A better investment would be in men, which plainly means educating and training talent...
...What Galbraith is saying, of course, is that all of us had best stop our nonsense and get down to realities...
...Underred by the horrid thought that this might blunt their art, Galbraith notes that some of our best American artists were not stopped when (by unusual luck) they became affluent...
...Well, perhaps some of the things these machines do and make are entirely unnecessary...
...Since Galbraith can do both, throwing in for good measure a heavy dash of urbane, dead-pan sardonic humor, he will not lack readers for anything he cares to write...
...For (observes Galbraith ) the solemn man may have heard that the truth will set him free, but he lightly senses that it may also make him seem silly...
...the result is a series of well-aimed thrusts at the mythology now enswathing—and inhibiting— political-economic thought...
...It is a hopeful sign...
...Training his batteries on peaceful competition with the Soviet Union, he observes that Americans who talk patriotically about high national purpose while prudently omitting all mention of the price simply are not serious...
...It isn't really fatal, though obviously undesirable...
...He suggests lines of possible action: One is to do nothing...
...An economist can find a wide audience if he can write English and also relate his technical subject to the vivid drama of modern life...
...Professor of Law, Columbia University JOHN KENNETH Galbraith is the most widely read economist on the American scene...
...a second is to rely on a combination of monetary and fiscal measures...
...If they do, they are going to have to put up...
...we will not have wagon-makers, and we will have General Motors...
...And, conceivably, even business houses could make use of artistic thinking as, for example, the Rockefellers have done...
...At the moment, the anti-inflationers base their strategy on opposing any public spending on education, health, defense, foreign aid or conservation...
...It might even be possible to get a few ideas from artists— incidentally arranging that artists do not have to live in the economic insecurity of vagabonds...
...Because inflation is a fighting issue (especially among the conservative banking fraternity), Galbraith takes a good long look at it...
...Among his targets is the stuffed-shirt solemnity of American social pontificators and he dares to suggest that we relax—as solemn men usually cannot...
...a third is to break up corporations and unions alike by anti-trust action...
...Most of the things to be done will cost money—public money...
...Those who claim to yearn for 19th-century free markets don't even mean it...
...Assistant Secretary of State, 193844...
...As always with Galbraith, the end of every paragraph punches the reader in the prestige...
...Protagonists of real competition either mean it or they don't...
...Currently, economic planning...
...The range is astonishing...
...Even now the New England farmsteads and idyllic Vermont villages are in fact supported by New Yorkers who make money in town and spend it in the country...
...His Affluent Society was a best seller two years ago...
...All readers will find this volume delightful, and enjoy it even as they squirm...
...It is no good indulging in social nostalgia, according to Galbraith...
...Government intervention where needed, increased taxation to pay for services which only Government can provide are considered bad thoughts and naughty words...
...Naughty or not, alas, they reflect reality...
...The Liberal Hour has already become one...
...Tens of thousands of readers are doing so already...
...the country, now an international creditor instead of a debtor, did not wish to import goods in payment...
...Since this book is not a treatise, it does not take and develop a single theme, as The Affluent Society did...
...how about having public interest represented...
...Better break the inhibitions, and tackle the job...
...As to measures—well, American businessmen have always defended masterly inactivity when trouble was coming up...
...Actually, we now have administered private price-fixing...
...At home, our society and our serious thinkers are worrying about the increasing dominance of the machine...
Vol. 44 • October 1960 • No. 41
