John Kenneth Galbraith 2006 Deaths

John Kenneth Galbraith

Harvard economist and best-selling author who advised several presidents and championed using government funds to reduce unemployment and for public services. An unabashed liberal, Galbraith argued in The Affluent Society that Americans had become obsessed with consumer goods at the expense of social services. He served as ambassador to India under President Kennedy and as a speechwriter for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson, and he helped President Johnson devise his Great Society Program.