Sameulson on the Crisis
18 June 2009 at 2:27 am Peter G. Klein 2 comments
| Peter Klein |
Is it wrong to pick on a 94-year-old? Mario Rizzo doesn’t think so, and neither do I — if it’s Paul Samuelson, perhaps the most influential economist of the twentieth century and bête noire to Austrians, libertarians, and many other types I hold near and dear. Samuelson, champion of “scientific” economics (i.e., the nineteenth-century physics model so effectively skewered by Phil Mirowski), the neo-Keynesian synthesis, and the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to economics textbooks, now says prediction is impossible and deficit spending unsustainable. What’s next, a startling pronouncement that, contrary to what Samuelson wrote in the pre-1991 editions of his textbook, the Soviet Union was not actually more productive than the US?
Bonus Keynesian material (via Ross Emmett): Did Keynes die of a bad tooth?
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Methods/Methodology/Theory of Science, People.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
libertyfirst | 18 June 2009 at 4:43 am
He also said, if I remember well, in 1967 or so, that fortunately economics got rid of those cranks who thought inflation to be a monetary phenomenon. He didn’t need to be 94 to be obnoxious for what concerns economic theory. :-)
2.
Mario Rizzo | 18 June 2009 at 6:59 am
Some would say I was unfair. However, when a 94 year economist of international fame, and who has no sign of dementia, writes an article, I think it is insulting and disrespectful to treat his article as if it were written by an incompetent. So, in fact, I am being respectful.