Much to my delight, the following appeared in today's Toronto Globe and
Mail: A13 ("J.K.Galbraith, who is 90, delivered this lecture last week on
receiving an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics. It is
reprinted from The Guardian." )
Excerpt: "I come to two pieces of the unfinished business of the century
and millenium that have high visibility and urgency. The first is the very
large number of the very poor even in the richest of countries and notably
in the U.S.....
The answer or part of the answer is rather clear: Everybody should
be guaranteed a decent income. A rich country such as the U.S. can well
afford to keep everybody out of poverty. Some, it will be said, will seize
upon the income and won't work. So it is now with more limited welfare, as
it is called. Let us accept some resort to leisure by the poor as well as
by the rich."
