James K. Galbraith > Quotes

“..."extreme capitalism": the obsessive, uncritical penetration of the concept of the market into every aspect of American life, and the attempt to drive out every other institution, including law, art, culture, public education, Social Security, unions, community, you name it. It is the conflation of markets with populism, with democracy, with diversity, with liberty, and with choice---and so the denial of any form of choice that imposes limits on the market. More than that, it is the elimination of these separate concepts from our political discourse, so that we find ourselves looking to the stock market to fund retirement, college education, health care, and having forgotten that in other wealthy and developed societies these are rights, not the contingent outcomes of speculative games.

James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government, University of Texas.”
― James K. Galbraith

“public debt is private wealth,”
― James K. Galbraith, The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth

“The service and office workers, checkout clerks, account managers, and salespeople whose jobs can be consolidated and rendered redundant by the digital revolution are the modern version of the horses driven off their Depression-era farms.”
― James K. Galbraith, The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth

“We must also restore the understanding achieved by Keynes and Minsky, and under the New Deal, of unstable speculation and financial fraud, later effaced by the doctrine of efficient markets. A new economics must rest on a biophysical and institutional framework, recognizing that fixed capital and embedded technology are essential for efficient productive operations, but that resource costs can render any fixed system fragile, and that corruption can destroy any human institution.”
― James K. Galbraith, The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth