With all due respect to Galbraith, he was no John Maynard Keynes.  This is, to be clear, the same Galbraith who claimed that there exists a long-run "clear choice--the trade-off--between high employment and inflation as against unemployment and relatively stable prices," and that "This trade-off is present in all accepted thought."  That is absolutely false, and has been understood to be false for decades.  In fact, it was laid to rest back in the 1970s by Milton Friedman and is what got Keynesianism into so much trouble, justified or not.

He was, of course, referencing the Phillips Curve -- an idea that came about because Phillips noticed an inverse correlation between inflation and unemployment.  Anyone who lived through the '70s should know of this.  Economists, who are, unfortunately, prone towards jumping on bandwagons, jumped on this one, as well.  What this "trade-off" really implies is that businesses are fooled temporarily by an increase on the money supply.  If the money supply increases without a corresponding increase in price, then, cet. par., prices have fallen in real terms, and demand is likely to pick up.  Employment picks up with the increased demand, and -- voila! -- we have our "secret weapon" for fighting unemployment, right?

Wrong.

It turns out that, just as Friedman predicted back then, price stickiness will only take that game so far.  Eventually businesses will respond to the jump in demand by raising prices, thus avoiding shortages that inevitably are the result of too-low a price (cough Nixon cough).  In other words, the Phillips Curve shifts outwards.  Surely anyone with any bit of common sense should've seen this coming.  When the Great Productivity Growth Slowdown, along with the oil shock, shook the US in the 1970s, the Phillips Curve turned out to be a crock of shit.

That's one reason for why I don't take Galbraith very seriously.  Paul Krugman is the man who called Galbraith on this in the 1990s, and Galbraith never did forgive him.  The only problem, for Galbraith, is that any college freshman taught by a faculty that makes even a half-assed effort can tell you this.  As Krugman article points out, -- and, for the record, I must confess to having stolen the above example from Krugman long ago -- Galbraith was also not a believer in the power of monetary policy, and I think the evidence points quite clearly to Galbraith being wrong on that.  (He can also hardly have considered himself a follower of Keynes while rejecting monetary policy.  Economic stimulation from the Fed is simply the other side of the same coin to deficit spending.  What separates the two is the fact that the former occurs in the private sector; the latter, in the public sector.)

Now, did Galbraith inspire many progressives thinkers?  Or perhaps the better question is, "Is there any doubt?"  I think the answer clearly that, yes, he did inspire many -- DeLong, Mankiw, (probably) Romer, and many other very famous economists of the modern era.  Was he a great writer?  I think he was a fair writer, although I don't think he held a candle to Keynes, as far as being witty is concerned.  But to greet Galbraith with less scepticism than "conventional economists" (whoever they are) is a fatal error and demonstrates an attraction to nothing more than writers who will reaffirm your settled prejudices.  And that, Robert, is sad.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin