John K Galbraith (was economists are corrupt)

James Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu
Tue Sep 29 10:40:54 PDT 1998


At 08:45 AM 9/29/98 PDT, you wrote:
>This peeved me much when I read it. Is this lazy thinking? Or is it
>words of a bourgeois economist, unable to see the glaring contradiction?
>Or maybe _The Good Society_ is one of JKG's weaker episodes.

I don't see a big contradiction between the two passages. He first says he's not in favor of equality, by which I presume, from context, he means _total equality_ (everyone having the same income).

Then he says that we currently have _too much_ inequality.

I would read this as saying that he wants to "split the difference," moving toward somewhere in between the degree of inequality we have now and total inequality.

It may be fuzzy, but it's not a glaring contradiction.

Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html



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