2006年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-John Kenneth Galbraith, In His Own Words

（单词翻译）

Don Gonyea: John Kenneth Galbraith, economist¹, diplomat², prolific³ author, Harvard professor, and iconoclast⁴, died yesterday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 97 years old, born in Canada to a farming family, Galbraith became the country's leading exponent⁵ of liberal social economist. He served in the Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson administrations, shaping social policies from the New Deal to the Great Society. Unabashedly liberal, John Kenneth Galbraith felt Franklin Delano Roosevelt affected⁶ our lives more than any other public figure he knew. Galbraith reemphasized that point in a conversation 7 years ago with NPR's Howard Berkers.

John Kenneth Galbraith: Anybody on Social Security, getting unemployment compensation, anybody who feels that there's a certain public responsibility for the well-being⁷ of people has a major debt to the New Deal and to FDR.

Howard Berkers: You worked in the Roosevelt administration. Did you have much...

John Kenneth Galbraith: I worked in the Roosevelt administration, but in terms of power, my life has been downhill ever since. I was put in charge of, first, of price control and rationing⁸ and then price control in World War II. I started with a staff of seven and ended up with somewhere around 15 thousand. And you could lower a price without my permission, but you couldn't raise a price, and I have, had no such authority ever since, nor do I want it.

Howard Berkers: You spoke⁹ with President Kennedy over time, over the course of many years, from your earliest days, I guess, at Harvard, and then later on when he was president. Tell me about those conversations and how you saw him evolve over time, particularly during his years as president.

John Kenneth Galbraith: Well, the special feature of any conversation with JFK involved his enormous candor¹⁰. I remember the morning when I was leaving to be ambassador in India and we had breakfast together at the White House. And the New York Times had a front-page article on that day on the new ambassador to India, which was quite favorable, and Kennedy pointed¹¹ to it, and asked how I liked it. I said I did, and then I added, "But I don't see why they had to call me arrogant¹²". And Kennedy said, "I don't see why not, everybody else does."

Don Gonyea: Economist John Kenneth Galbraith died yesterday at the age of 97.

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Words in NPR
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iconoclast: someone who attacks established ideas and customs;提倡打破旧习的人
New Deal: a programme of economic and social changes that was introduced in the US by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, in order to help people who had lost their jobs or their property as a result of the Great Depression. It included money for farmers to borrow and an important programme of public works;新政(指美国罗斯福在20世纪30年代实施的内政纲领名称)
unemployment compensation: 失业补偿金
well-being: a feeling of being comfortable, healthy, and happy;康乐, 安宁, 福利