Word: galbraith
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Charades & Spinsters. When the corporate planners do not, for whatever reason, provide for themselves, continued Galbraith, the state comes through "a little too miraculously." When more technocrats are needed, government steps up educational spending. The state also provides demand for the "more risky technology," such as the SST and other "misfortunes." Antitrust is a slick "charade," killing unimportant mergers but not touching established giants...
Most important, the state sets maximum limits on wages and prices-through "guideposts" in the U.S., the "freeze" in Britain-in order to protect the corporate-planned economy from inflation. Galbraith found it amusing that such control, though a reality, is nonetheless still approached "with great caution and circumspection, somewhat in the manner of a Victorian spinster viewing an erotic statue...
Cynicism & Sophism. Mixing his sophism with some cynicism, Galbraith explained that such shyness will be outgrown before long. Corporate technocrats and government bureaucrats work in concert, he said, because they have the same aims-not a national goal or even maximum profits, but "the promotions, enlarged opportunities, higher salaries and prestige which go with growth." Moreover, since technology-oriented planning is common to both Western capitalism and Eastern European Communism, the two economic systems are "not startlingly different...
...with no "irreconcilable difference between economic systems," asserted Galbraith, there is no basis for a "weapons competition," which in both the East and the West really serves only the "underwriting of technology...
...Galbraith's notions met with astonishment even in socialist Britain. The Economist said that the "Galbraithian heresy" about the end of the marketplace "sits rather oddly beside the experience of the past 20 years, which have seen a wider array of entirely new consumer goods than in any other two decades before." The Daily Telegraph editorialized that Galbraith's propositions were based on "sleight of mouth." Economist Colin Clark was amazed at Galbraith's "grand and illusory dreams of all-powerful industrial corporations untouched by competition," and suggested that he observe a "cautious unwillingness to extend theory...