Economist Galbraith dies at 97

BOSTON – John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97.

Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.

During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to India.

“He had a wonderful and full life,” his son said.

Galbraith, who was outspoken in his support of government action to solve social problems, became a large figure on the American scene in the decades after World War II.

He was one of America’s best-known liberals, and he never shied away from the label.

“There is no hope for liberals if they seek only to imitate conservatives, and no function either,” Galbraith wrote in 1992.

One of his most influential books, “The Affluent Society,” was published in 1958.

It argued that the U.S. economy was producing individual wealth but hadn’t adequately addressed public needs such as schools and highways. U.S. economists and politicians were still using the assumptions of the world of the past, where scarcity and poverty were near-universal, he said.

“The total alteration in underlying circumstances has not been squarely faced,” he wrote. “As a result, we are guided, in part, by ideas that are relevant to another world.”

In 1999, a panel of judges organized by the Modern Library, a book publisher, picked “The Affluent Society” as No. 46 on its list of the century’s 100 best English-language works of nonfiction.

Galbraith also was known for his theories on countervailing forces in the economy, where groups such as labor unions were needed to strike a political and social balance.