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Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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John Kenneth Galbraith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1908
Born: October 15
Died: 2006
Died: April 29
Diplomat
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Politician
University Teacher
John K. Galbraith
Theory
Pass
Sparrow
Policy
Older
Sparrows
Side
Merely
Elegant
Sides
Generation
Supply
Economic
Road
David
Called
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Feed
Less
Approach
Cover
Oats
Enough
Generations
Economics
Trickle

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
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Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The Senate has unlimited debate in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The notion that you would initiate a new product without preparing the way by persuasion and advertising and salesmanship is fantastic. It's an integral part of the system.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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I've been writing a book called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. I published part of it already in The Progressive (Free Market Fraud, January 1999). But I've been interrupted these last few months. It deals with all of the things we do, in an innocent way, to cover up the truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith