Everyone's politics comes from multiple sources, I imagine. I know mine does. I synthesise a fair number of influences in my vision of how the world ought to be run, how humans should relate to each other, and how we should exercise the power of government. One of those sources is the work of John Kenneth Galbraith, the Canadian economist who played a major role in American politics across the middle of the twentieth century. Galbraith's popularisations were among the first books I read, even before I opened an economics textbook (Lipsey, as I recall), and they provided a great deal of clarity about how the economy works. Now, Galbraith has died, and a writer who, among other things, made clear how the US misunderstood the countries to its south, will write no more. I just wanted to express my gratitude for his work, and acknowledge that it had been an influence on me.
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