Economics and the Art of Controversy

“There is no reason for democracy to partake of the nature of a barroom brawl. However, the purpose of this essay is not to suggest an improvement in public manners or in the comportment of our debate on public issues. Such suggestions have been made before without notable effect. Rather its purpose is to look beyond the sound and fury of contemporary political argument in one important field of affairs—that having to do with economic policy—and to see how grave are the questions being debated. It is always possible that a cool and tolerably unemotional examination of issues will serve as an antidote to the more commonplace exaggeration and overstatement.”Galbraith compiled this book from a series of lectures he delivered at the College of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington in 1954.