Sometimes even dead economists have good ideas. Moreover, ones sneered at by their successors in later intellectual cohorts may have posthumous periods of triumph. That is happening right now, at least briefly, for John Kenneth Galbraith, who lived from 1908 to 2006. He was a rock star of economics among the general public in the 1960s, although not to most other economists. His books spent weeks on bestseller lists. He was a prominent adviser to President John F. Kennedy and served as U.S. ambassador to India. He authored a widely-aired TV series on economic history and issues. Then he largely faded into the woodwork and few under age 65 would even recognize the name.
However, some of Galbraith’s insights were important and once again are relevant to the our nation’s present situation. At least two topics in recent news would be very familiar to this U.S.-Canadian thinker.
The first would be the slowly brewing storm in cryptocurrencies. “Block-chain technology” may well play an important role over the long run, just as “international-reply postage coupons” did in communicating between countries in the 1920s. But for both, legitimate uses soon were overwhelmed by their use in Ponzi investment schemes, in which money sent in by later investors is used to pay lavish returns to early ones, creating a widespread sense of highly lucrative returns.
Students of U.S. history will understand the return postage coupon reference. Somehow, the idea that…
