Where did the giant Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith fail?
And presumably some people did remember that McLandress was himself a figment of the imagination. In the case of John Kenneth Galbraith, who died last week, the Times obituary could scarcely fail to register the man’s prominence. He was an economist, diplomat, Harvard professor, and advisor to JFK. Royalties on his book The Affluent Society (1958) guaranteed that — as a joke of the day had it — he was a full member. But the notice also made a point of emphasizing that his reputation was in decline. Venturing with uncertain steps into a characterization of his economic thought, the obituary treated Galbraith as kind of fossil from some distant era, back when Keynsian liberals still roamed the earth. Scott McLemee, “Wheat and Chaff,” Inside Higher Ed, May 4, 2006 — http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/03/mclemee He was patrician in manner, but an acid-tongued critic of what he once called “the sophisticated and derivative world of the Eastern seaboard.” He was convinced that for
