maybe he will realise that an anti-semitic nazi ballet dancer, and an anti-semitic nazi economist do different kinds of damage.
and that there are other ways to be bad, such that economists have to be on their guard against being bad more than many other professionals.
Samuelson, like PK, as an outspoken apostle of Keynes, is certainly culpable for a great amount of human misery, specifically including the current crisis and coming tragedy. He was an enabler of fascism/socialism, apologist for theft, and condoned enslaving generations unborn with debt.
Solely culpable? No of course not.
But Student agrees with that bad stuff. [:D]
Actually, you have it backwards. I am the one asking others to explain specifics about why they think Samuelson’s views or economic work generated “wide spread misery” (and have been since my very first post in this thread). You are the trying to compare Samuelson to an easily dislike able figure like Feder without a single sentence on what you think the two had in common. If anyone is dodging any questions its you.
If the only connection between Samuelson and Feder is that they both supported some degree of government involvement in the economy, then I would wonder who would not find themselves in Feder’s rank.
In the Road to Serfdom (chapter 9), Hayek himself said he thought the “case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong”. Oooohhhh!!! The horrors!!! I am sure you reserve the same ire for him and cheer his death as well. After all, what could be worse than the taxes and social insurance, which violate my natural right to blah blah blah.
Now, I am not really interested in hearing how “Samuelson may not have been a Nazi sympathizer…but man supporting government management of the business cycle means a with Nazis and dictators valid”. So if my type-happy fingers will allow it, I am going to let this conversation die the shameful death it deserves.
You leave a conversation like this? Laughable. It’s the reason you post on this site.
Oh, I was assuming you were familiar with the Mises, Rothbard Tradition… my bad.
Krugman published a short blog post, ridiculing the comparison between Samuelson and Eichmann. I commented (reproduced here, while it awaits moderation) with my usual attempt to remain “mainstream”, but at the same time make a libertarian point. Of the comments already posted I liked was Bill Ferensen’s:
Which is more juvenile: making idiotic comparisons between Keynesianism and Nazism, or quoting such a comparison for the sole purpose of implying that anyone who who is anti-Keynesian shares this belief?
Of course, there is the fact that in an edition of the General Theory, Keynes stated that his ideas would work best in a country like Nazi Germany. Krugman, et al, forget that fact.
Where did I see that quote of Samuelson escalating writing the nation’s economics texts above writing its laws? I guess he preferred writing the books because he thought it was less powerful. /sarcasm
Not to mention Goebbels commending FDR for dealing with the depression the same way as them.
I haven’t cheered his death at any single moment. I just said that he was a quite shitty economist who commited some serious mistakes that would lead many people to ostracism, but he could keep his glamour and reputation by presenting himself as an economical wizard for the guys in Washington. May he rest in peace.
Student, while I am pretty much in agreement with your temperament and reasoning thus far on this thread, a couple of things:
Now if a Dr. Doom or a Gorilla Grodd seized power and installed economic policy X, an economic platform that is aimed to very gradually impoverish the many in favor of the few (or perhaps gradually impoverish his most disliked minority group) may lead to just as bad consequences and more importantly has a chance to be much more effective and a much bigger chance to get away with it.
Note: I am NOT saying Keynesian economics is that policy, nor am I saying a scientist should be blamed for a leading politicians actions, just that I see how it is possible for people to blame economic systems for massive evil; in fact, people do it all the time with Capitalism, Feudalism, and Socialism I don’t see how Keynesianism should be much of a surprise to anyone.
.Now, while I do not think Keynesianism is THAT bad ideologically as the example I illustrated above, I suspect many people here may feel that way, hence why you are seeing such a hostile reaction by some to some man’s death. Regardless that would most likely be a debate for another thread.
That being said, at worst Samuelson was a bad scientist. And unless evidence can prove otherwise an intellectually honest one who had no deliberate malicious intent on causing massive poverty, nor did he force his thoughts into action on anyone. People feeling ecstatic about his death are displaying disappointing behavior on several different levels.
Samuelson died.
I am familiar with his writing. It rubbish.
One of them, ‘proves’ normal distribution and finite variance of price differences in the stock market by integrating a hypothetical function of behavior. Of course, if he integrated it, then he assumes its continuous; but if so, then it has finite variance by central limit theorem. That is to say, its derivative will have a normal distribution. All his arguments are of this quality: ‘A has finite variance because I assume it does.’ All his math is just a way to make his work look better. In fact, I learned from his math that his argument is petitio principi.
Again, for instance, he wrote a whole chapter on Leontief production input output and linear programming. But its so stupid. Why? That production function only has one input: labour. In other words, labour comes in, cars come out. Alchemy.
And he remarked, famously, in one of his editions of his big textbook, that the Soviet Union is empirical proof of the prospering of central planning. Then in a year or two, the Soviet Union collapsed. He removed the statement. It that something a scientist does?
Oh, and in another article, he ‘disproves’ all of Mandelbrot’s work by saying he doesn’t see how a 100% price difference can occur in 15( why 15?) minutes. Apparently he has never seen penny stocks, which have higher risk and fatter tails in the distribution.
Samuelson liked to make arguments via diversions and ad hominem, or using a single empirical example, which is often arbitrary. His writing is of the quality of Keynes in his General Theory; imprecise and informal to the point of being considered poor on an internet forum.
He read Gossen, and apparently liked him very much, it goes from MIT. But that obviously didn’t change his views (since Gossen has a business cycle theory, a commodity standard theory, economic calculation argument, marginal quantities emphasized, and called communists, which includes Samuelson, “harebrained”). He liked Gossen because Gossen liked diagrams and formulated the nonlinear optimization conditions way back when; all the other stuff that is Gossen innovated, because Samuelson is sympathetic to socialism, doesn’t count. What a superficial reader of books!
So, anyway, Samuelson’s dead? ‘So what?’ as the famous word in economics are. He doesn’t deserve special respect any more than someone who has contributed nothing to his science. What has he contributed to economics, in fact? Why are we worried if his page has been removed from the book of important names, if his name was never in the book of important names to begin with?
Would we be worried if a person who did nothing in his life die? No. Then why are we worried about Paul Samuelson?
haha, nice work. His work on free trade wasn’t bad though. I mean I’m no expert, undergrad international eco doesn’t really go too deep into it.
Before or after he became anti-free trade?
I personally don’t think it’s a good thing to wish death or illness or anything like that upon a person nor to rejoice when it happens. However, I do completely agree with those posting here that Samuelson (along with many other political hack “economists”) caused a great deal of hardship and suffering in the world. The man explicitly advocated disastrous policies and was extremely influential in proliferating Keynesian nonsense and influencing politicians to implement these policies. Whether or not he was really just an imbecile that believed in what he was saying or whether he knew he was simply telling the government what they wanted to here to attain power and prestige is debatable. Either way he did advocate and proliferate nonsensenomics that made many people in the world far worse off.
That is part of my criteria. But there is something else important for everyone to recognize. Even in the case of an imbecile, it is a moral hazard to be passive on matters of power. Take the following scenario for demonstration:
An imbecile joins the KKK. He believes upon his observation that they are doing good for blacks. He donates money to help the cause and speaks out for them. Someone villifiies the KKK. Is it unfair for the imbecile to be villified by passive participation? No. It is part of the responsibility of being a person living in a society to be careful when affecting others. It seems to be a part of this thing known as common courtesy. You may have heard of it. If not, there is a vacant cage at the zoo. Is it unfair if he took great measures to learn about what his support was really doing. Still no. Everyone should have the fire right under his ass to remind him of what is at stake. It comes with playing with fire that you can get burned. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
This should be obviously reasonable to anyone proclaiming to care a great deal, or whatever, about people. Anyone who rather finds that the world is nought but a boardgame, the people are the pieces for his leisure ought to stfu about any pretense of compassion. I insist.
Now that the thread has died is a good time to mention that I was being a wee bit facetious.
Prophetic [:P]
I learned economics with Samuelson’s textbook, it was ok.