Thomas Balogh, Baron Balogh (2 November 190520 January 1985), born Balog Tamás, was a British economist and member of the House of Lords. The elder son of a wealthy Budapest Jewish family (his father was head of public transport, his mother the daughter of a professor), Balogh studied at the city Gymnasium, considered 'the Eton of Hungarian youth', then at the universities of Budapest and Berlin. He took a two-year research position at Harvard University as a Rockefeller Fellow in 1928. Following this, Balogh worked in banking in Paris, Berlin and Washington before coming to England.A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, ed. Philip Arestis, Malcolm C. Sawyer, pg 28-35, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2000 After getting British citizenship in 1938, he became a lecturer at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, and was elected to a Fellowship in 1945, then became Reader in 1960. He was also the economic correspondent for the '' New Statesman'', an economic adviser to

Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...

's Cabinet office following the 1964 Labour Party victory, and member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations. As an advisor in the Cabinet Office after 1964, Balogh was a critic of consumption- and profit-orientated tax policies, arguing that "profit can be earned not merely by satisfying long felt wants more efficiently and in a better fashion, but also by creating new wants through artificially engendered satisfaction and the suggestion of status symbols", instead arguing that nationalisation was a better means of securing wage restraint and a more equitable tax system as a whole. Balogh was opposed to Britain's entry of the EEC. Balogh was created a

Life Peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...

as Baron Balogh, "of

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness, the state of being great *Greater than, in inequality (mathematics), inequality *Greater (film), ''Greater'' (film), a 2016 American film *Greater (flamingo), the oldest flamingo on record *Greater (song), "Greate ...

" on 20 June 1968. He was married twice: firstly in 1945 to Penelope Noel Mary Ingram Tower (daughter of Rev. Henry Bernard Tower, Vicar of

Swinbrook Swinbrook is a village on the River Windrush, about east of Burford in Oxfordshire, England. The village is in the civil parish of Swinbrook and Widford. Widford is a hamlet about west of Swinbrook. The 2011 Census recorded the parish popul ...

, Oxfordshire, and widow of Oliver Gatty

907-1940 9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the Brahmi numerals, beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshat ...

(a Balliol Fellow, by whom she had a daughter, Tirril), a psychotherapist, with whom he had two sons and a daughter; secondly in 1970 to Catherine (née Cole, previously married to Anthony Storr), a psychiatrist and author.

Major works

* ''The Dollar Crisis'' (1949) * ''The Economics of Poverty'' (1970) * ''The Irrelevance of Conventional Economics'' (1982)

Biographies

* ''The Life and Times of Thomas Balogh: A Macaw Among Mandarins'', June Morris (Sussex Academic Press, 2007).

References

1905 births 1985 deaths 20th-century British economists Academics of the London School of Economics Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford 20th-century Hungarian economists Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Balogh, Thomas Balogh, Baron Chairs of the Fabian Society Hungarian emigrants to the United Kingdom Life peers created by Elizabeth II {{Life-peer-stub