After Galbraith: Who’s on Next?

FORTY YEARS have rushed by since John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the first of his two dozen books. For many of those years, Galbraith dominated the market for popularized economics, when he wasn’t serving as Ambassador to India, or writing speeches for Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, and all three Kennedys.

His message appears to have solidified early. Galbraith claimed the U.S. economy was dominated by a handful of giant firms that could raise prices at will, such as (believe it or not) U.S. Steel, Burroughs, Chrysler, and Zenith. Thanks to advertising, producers can persuade us to buy anything at any price. Galbraith always thought it foolish to apply antitrust to these powerful “oligopolies” (which it is, because they aren’t oligopolies), so we supposedly need the countervailing power of a big government, armed with wage and price controls and other regulations.

About the Author

Alan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds, National Review’s economics editor from 1972 to 1976, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Income and Wealth.

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FORTY YEARS have rushed by since John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the first of his two dozen books. For many of those years, Galbraith dominated the market for popularized economics, when he wasn’t serving as Ambassador to India, or writing speeches for Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, and all three Kennedys.

His message appears to have solidified early. Galbraith claimed the U.S. economy was dominated by a handful of giant firms that could raise prices at will, such as (believe it or not) U.S. Steel, Burroughs, Chrysler, and Zenith. Thanks to advertising, producers can persuade us to buy anything at any price. Galbraith always thought it foolish to apply antitrust to these powerful “oligopolies” (which it is, because they aren’t oligopolies), so we supposedly need the countervailing power of a big government, armed with wage and price controls and other regulations.