There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know. John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes From John Kenneth Galbraith No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals. John Kenneth Galbraith wall choices decision From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute. John Kenneth Galbraith voice compassion people The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning. John Kenneth Galbraith size economy planning Foresight is an imperfect thing - all prevision in economics is imperfect. John Kenneth Galbraith imperfect-things foresight economics Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization. John Kenneth Galbraith organization men facts In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough. John Kenneth Galbraith demand too-much facts The first goal of the technostructure is its own security. John Kenneth Galbraith security goal firsts In 1736, Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearence because its printer was "with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful." The press was busy printing money. John Kenneth Galbraith printing-money pennsylvania apology The oldest [John Kenneth] Galbraith rule is that when you hear that a new era has dawned, you should take cover. John Kenneth Galbraith kenneth eras should We have a swarm of people in the stock market - not out of knowledge, not out of expectation, but out of basically a gambling instinct, the hope that prices will go up. John Kenneth Galbraith gambling expectations people A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation. John Kenneth Galbraith innovation too-much government I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be. John Kenneth Galbraith faithful economics reader Franklin Delano Roosevelt and J.F Kennedy were Presidents in very different times. John Kenneth Galbraith franklin-delano-roosevelt different president There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater. What do we worry about? We worry about our schools. We worry about our public recreational facilities. We worry about our law enforcement and our public housing. All of the things that bear upon our standard of living are in the public sector. John Kenneth Galbraith law worry school [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World War II. By contrast, JFK came in relatively peaceful, agreeable times. John Kenneth Galbraith peaceful war two There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J.F.] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and surmounted. John Kenneth Galbraith franklin problem years The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years, including recurrent speculative episodes. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that we're now having another one of those speculative episodes. John Kenneth Galbraith doubt mind years Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson. John Kenneth Galbraith thanks vietnam war For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last. John Kenneth Galbraith progressive lasts sake I do the best with what exists. John Kenneth Galbraith do-the-best
