American Capitalism, Affluent Society, New Industrial State. This trilogy established the Galbraith economic philosophy which seems to be what is dominating the current Administration in their goals and their actions.
Unlike pure Keynes philosophy which looks upon the economy as a system with knobs which one can manipulate the Galbraithian economist looks upon the economy from a power perspective. Namely that the Government has power for good and evil and that the Government has a duty to deploy that power for what it sees as good. The famous book by Bertrand Russell on Power is an interesting example of how power has been used through the ages. Galbraith's experience during his times in Washington showed him how power can be applied in a societal context.
American Capitalism
In American Capitalism Galbraith states (p 104-105):
"In one way or another nearly all of the great American fortunes are based on the present or past possession of monopoly power. ….Income inequality like monopoly distorts the use of resources. It diverts them from the wants of the many to the esoteric desire of the few…Unecessary inequality in income, unnecessary in the sense that it does not regard differences in intelligence, application or willingness to take risks, may also impair economic stability."
Thus to Galbraith, monopoly is evil and those with intelligence, hard work, and risk takers get rewarded but that excessive wealth distorts the true direction of the economy. The work by Piketty as shown below is an example of the current trend of socialist economists who worry that income distribution is skewed. In the Piketty plot we see the percent of wealth held by the top 1% of the population. We see the explosion now in the US reaching levels not seen since the beginnings of the Depression. However these are not monopoly amounts.
The current Administration picks up on Piketty and in page 11 of the 2010 Budget puts the Piketty curve. The curve has been updated to 2006 and is for the US alone. It is quite interesting to see that Piketty showed the curved back before the Depression in 1930 whereas the Administration shows it only to 1980. As one says, Statistics can be quite confusing! It can also be the hand maid of deception.
Countervailing power was the second theme of this work. As Galbraith says (p 111):
"In fact, new restraints on private power did appear to replace competition. They were nurtured by the same process of concentration which impaired or destroyed competition. But they appeared not on the same side of the market but on the opposite side, not with competitors but with customers or suppliers. It will be convenient to have a name for this counterpart of competition and I shall call it countervailing power."
To some degree there is a Marxian like dialectic at play here between the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, yet Galbraith does not share the inevitability of the Marxist and is more a Darwinian in his though, albeit one where control or stabilization by the Government is a key player.
Galbraith continues (p. 136):
"In fact, the support of countervailing power has become in modern times perhaps the major domestic peacetime function of the federal government…..These measures, all designed to give a group a market power it did not have before, comprised the most important legislative acts of the New Deal. They fueled the sharpest domestic controversies of the New and Fair Deals."
Thus in his first work we see Galbraith positing two issues:
1. Income inequality leads to social unrest and income inequality is a result of the ineffectiveness of Government in permitting monopolistic entities to take advantage of the people.
2. Countervailing Power is a major element of Government's balancing the interests of the American people and the Government's use of this effects the establishment of new power groups whose new influence can modulate that of other groups. The Government has both the authority and the moral force to effect the establishment of these new entitlements and the support of these new countervailing groups.
The last point is again a bit Marxian in that there is the dialectic process at work again and in this case it does pit the proletariat against the capitalists. We see this in the current Administrations efforts in various venues. We see this in the President's own background as a Community Organizer. It is the Acorn empowerment and it is the Government's role as facilitator, not necessarily as the end agent itself.
Affluent Society
The Affluent Society claims three major things concerning consumption (See The Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University):
1. That the producers create consumer demand that the consumer is in many ways responding to the producers of the goods via advertising.
The consumer's mind has effectively been taken over by the producer. The producers, according to Galbraith, have the ability to produce what they can produce and get the consumers to buy whatever they produce.
2. That the relationship between consumption and some form of consumer utility function is near evaporating, that consumer buy when motivated by the producer and not as a result of some underlying exogenous need or utility.
This means that people are no longer the arbiters of their own fate, This was developed as a response to Madison Avenue advertising and the advertising age in the 1950s and 1960s. During that period people believe that by the appropriate form of advertising, media manipulation that people could be made to buy anything. The natural extension corollary to this is the use of the broad based media of toady by Government to make people believe whatever Government wants them to believe. This assumes that people have abandoned any inherent utility function. More importantly this assumes that people have abandoned values.
3. That the structural pressures to increase private consumption drives out the provision of public goods.
This means that to Galbraith the consumer was being directed by the producers to spend their money on goods from the commercial sector and as such the needs of the public sector were being neglected. This in Galbraith's eyes meant that the countervailing power of the government should intervene via taxation and reallocate the expenditures based upon trends as perceived by Government into public works which in the view off the government were more beneficial, and had a utility far in excess of the consumption which was occurring.
Galbraith has been quoted as to his environmental bent by telling the tale of a family who goes on a camping journey amidst roads in disrepair and streams filled with polluted waters.
New Industrial State
The New Industrial State was his third in the trilogy. I remember reading it when it came out in the mid 60s. There also at the time was the debate between Solow and Galbraith. This is well elaborated upon in the book by Parker on Galbraith. Indeed the Parker book is exceptionally well done albeit politically biased towards Galbraith and strongly anti-Republican. Parker relates the thesis that is at the heart of this book (pp 439-448):
1. The giant corporation is the "characteristic organization" of modern capitalism.
In the mid 60s there was AT&T, GTE, ITT and massive companies in all sectors. The age of the true entrepreneur was not yet there. In fact it was the Government which expressly prevented this. For the Government made AT&T a monopoly and the Government actually sucked massive amounts of capital in taxes, 90% marginal rates, and massive amounts of technical people into Defense and NASA efforts thus depleting the US economy for a generation. To some degree this is akin to the "green jobs" of the current Administration which will suck the people from "market driven" value creation to Government funded employment.
2. Shareholders, the nominal owners of the company, have little power over the company.
Again true then but shareholder suits did start up albeit they were eventually suppressed by the Government.
3. The members of what Galbraith calls the "technostructure", the techno bureaucrats in companies, own little in the company and seek low risk by not maximizing profits and fitting the classic economic model.
This is also now a changed paradigm. Again the entrepreneur changed this and then it was adopted en masse by the corporations where options now make management large owners in companies. Those massive compensation packages are truly light on salary but heavy on deferred option compensation. Yet profit maximization is deferred for long term market survivability. That is more a way of the market than of the change in corporations.
4. Corporations do not profit maximize but seek to sustain themselves and to survive.
This is clearly true of the large company, because if they maximized profit from quarter to quarter the way the market works volatility would be too excessive. However if we look at the recent financial crises there is clearly just the opposite. They went to extremes maximizing profit. The extremes took them to, and over, the brink.
5, Advertising and a national ideology of praise for growth in the consumption of consumables misdirects the collective energies away from the fact that the US is awash in affluence.
Galbraith is fixated with the affluence issue. Strange since in this period it was nowhere near what it had been during the pre-depression period or now.
6. The key resource of the US economy is not the large industrial capacity but the ability to mobilize organized intelligence in the business sector.
Galbraith saw the result of the deployment of intelligence during the war and after it in industrial areas. This included the application of statistics to marketing and the ability to target specific customers with specific messages. This was all new and he saw in it a major strategic advantage.
Current Administration
We look at the current Administration and in many key areas they exhibit Galbratian approaches to Government. Specifically we look at the following:
1. Power: Galbraith was a believer in power, and power to influence, to control, to manage. The Galbraithian power if held in the hands of a benign and fatherly government. The current Administration is a massive collector of power. It does so through the explosive expansion of entitlement programs.
2. Countervailing Power: The Galbraithian believes that Government can use its power to create countervailing dialectics in the economy between established classic capitalist entities and collections or groups which the Government believes can and should be represented. Acorn is a prima facie example. The groups being sponsored by illegal immigrants is another. These groups are empowered by the Government and then the dialectic is created. Countervailing power is in the end Government power as well. The Government facilitation if not outright creation and support of countervailing powers are the ways Government can exercise control of the people with an arm's length approach. It is an invisible to most approach. One must deconstruct the new entities introduced often through legislation to see what their true purpose is.
3. The Prevalence of Large Corporations: This assumes that there does not exist any class of entrepreneurs as we know them today. That business organically thrives to the point of monopolies and then continues in a risk adverse manner to persevere. That they are not driven by classic capitalist drives but by mere survival sustained forever. This history of capitalism is just the opposite. It is purely Darwinian. Just look at AT&T. The Administration's treatment of GM is an example of this belief of the countervailing power with the large sustained corporation and fails to understand that it is unacceptable in a capitalist world. The weak must not survive, that includes an over bloated labor union.
4. Advertising, or in our current day parlance, the new media, can control public opinion: The current Administration is a true believer and practitioner in that. They believe that, like the Galbraithian Corporation which uses advertising to promote its view, the Government can do the same. Thus, the President on Leno.
5. Government is the ultimate and optimum arbiter of all societal issues: Government is a benign and all knowing benefactor and is required to arbitrate between all the players. Government is essential. Government worked well when it worked big. The Government is the wise Oz, the wizard who is all knowing and all powerful. The market, specifically the free market, is a ruthless jungle from which the Government protects the citizens. Unlike a socialist who wants the Government to own the resources, the Galbraithianist wants the Government to arbitrate between the consumer and the corporations. This is clearly what the current Administration proposes and is attempting to do.
6. Concentration of Wealth is bad: The accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few is unacceptable and it strikes at the heart of American culture. It is the role of the Government to transfer such excessive wealth to those in need, need as determined by the Government. The Administration seeks to take wealth from those at the top incomes and to further flatten the distribution of wealth to all. In their mind the skewed distribution is almost immoral. There should be equality of wealth because wealth in a Galbraithian sense if inherently evil. Wealth however is defined on their terms.
7. The People can readily be motivated by media to act in accord with Government: People are artificially motivated to consume commercial products by corporations to the detriment of public services, goods, and the environment. The Administration's plan for cap and trade is an example of how the Administration seeks to flow money from the consumers, the people, to programs and projects that the Government believes are better. The Stimulus package is another step in the direction. Unlike the New Deal, the current Administration has taken massive moves in those areas.
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