ABSTRACT
The economics of John Kenneth Galbraith has both a critical side and a substantive side. Galbraith objected to economic theory because it assumes perfect competition and ignores the economic power accumulated by large corporations. He criticized politicians for caving in to the power of large corporations rather than acting in the public interest. And he criticized his fellow economists as idiots savants, who can do sophisticated mathematical analysis but do not understand the real economic world. Substantively, Galbraith brought the notion of power into economic analysis and drew out the consequences of doing this.
