In the latest issue of Reason Magazine, economist Deirdre McCloskey has a beautifully-penned article about Galbraith, Schumpeter, economics and rhetoric. Definitely worth a read, particularly the parts about Galbraith’s zingers and Schumpeter’s three great ambitions.
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
PJD on Turning Points PJD on Turning Points Clinton McMurray on Turning Points ChrisPer on Turning Points Daniel Waldenström on Turning Points Archives
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
Categories
- Australian issues
- Australian Politics
- Behavioural Economics
- Blogging
- Book launch stuff
- Books
- Coming Events
- Current Affairs
- Development Economics
- Eclectic Observations
- Econometrics
- Economics & Public Policy Course
- Economics for Government Course
- Economics Generally
- Economics of Education
- Economics of Elections
- Economics of National Security
- Economics of the Family
- Election
- Environmental Economics
- Film
- Finance
- Food and Drink
- From the Frontiers
- Games
- Global issues
- Health economics
- Indigenous Policy
- Inequality
- Interesting stuff
- Iraq
- Jobs
- Labour Economics
- Law
- Low Wage Work
- Macroeconomics
- Media
- Prediction Markets
- Randomisation
- Religion
- Social Capital
- Sport
- Sports
- Tax
- Television
- Thinktanks
- Trade & Development
- Travel
- Uncategorized
- Universities
- Urban Economics
- US Politics
- Web/Tech
- Weblogs
- What I'm Reading
Meta
agreed, a good read. unfortunate she chooses to grind her own axe in the closing paragraphs — to be expected, I guess.
That was some pretty mild axe-grinding!
A great read, thanks.
Her axe-grinding (aka bias) pervaded the entire article. To trivialise the great challenges to capitalism, especially the last one ‘environmental decay’ as mere fads is disgraceful.
And to ignore Galbraith’s other work (other than a passing reference to the affluent socity) takes the indsutrial state out of context.
We are experiencing some extreme forms of
“Private affluence, public squalor” right now.
‘extreme forms‘ – surely not that extreme in this time of, generally speaking, greater across-the-board prosperity than pretty much ever before?
‘mere fads‘ – amen to which. Unfortunately, I think you may have leapt to a conclusion there. The ‘mere fad’ (your words, note) of which she writes is not environmental decay, but the idea that it is somehow the fault, if not the actual design, of capitalism.
A stupid fad, in fact.
But my favorite line, and one which hints at doing justice to Andrew’s superlative:
‘Schumpeter became permanently suspicious of state power. Galbraith became permanently delighted with it.‘
That line was one of my favourites, too.
But let me be clear on the axe grinding. I don’t care one way or the other about her attitude to capitalism. I just find it tiring that every time she writes something, she never misses an opportunity to stick it to the profession. I quote:
“An economics that doesn’t acknowledge talk and its creativity may be in some pointless sense “exact,†but it doesn’t illuminate the world we have, the world admired by Schumpeter and zinged by Galbraith, of entrepreneurs—in the market, the corporation, the government, the laboratory, the street. Capitalism, like democracy, is talk, talk, talk all the way down.”
Clearly a cry for more story telling in economics (but isn’t that what sociology is for?) That last sentence, in particular, is especially vacuous as a grounds for critique of modern economics.
Hmm. Either she didn’t express herself as clearly as she might, or I just understood her to mean what I myself thought 🙂
I understood her to mean that capitalism’s great genius is feedback and interaction. Capitalism is a permanent and evolving conversation, which is why Galbraith who preferred listening to himself was so dumb when it came to capitalism.
Today’s AFR has something on the back page which mentions how Galbraith’s theory that corporations could manufacture demand at will through advertising and thus had perverted the laws of supply and demand (sounds kinda like Chomsky after reading intro eco 101) came out just after the Ford Edsel.
That damn evidence, again!
We cannot sustain 800 bilion a year trade deficits. We cannot export our way out of this mess. The only answer is a sharply lower dollar to drive manufactruing home and to lower the trade deficit. The dollar has much farther to fall. What you are seeing is a long term effort (it will take 20 years) to get the trade deficit back under 1% of GDP. We are currently running a trade imbalance of nearly 6% of GDP. No nation can do this. The IMF would be stepping in to help any nation if its trade impalance went to 6% of GDP becuase its currency would collapse! The U.S. is different, but still we cannot sustain a trade deficit of this magnitude. People must understand, when we buy an item from say China, we pay in dollars. The Chinese company we just bought from them goes to an Exchange Bank in China and converts those dollars to Yuan. The Chinese banking system (Chinese Government) is now sitting on the dollars. They can either 1, buy oil, 2, buy Treasuries, 3. buy U.S goods, 4. buy U.S. Corporations, 5. other. Over time if we (the U.S. ) contiue to run a trade deficit we could simply be completely bought and controlled by foreigners. Warren Buffet has explained the situation as being like a rich Texas farmer who loses a small piece of his land year after year and never notices for a while. When he then notices, tragedy sets in because he no longer controls his land. So in sum, we need to get the trade deficit way down. This is why the Fed has abandoned the dollar. It wil be going down for the next 20 years. That is how long it is going to take to correct this imbalance mess.
Andrew,
My you’re reading some interesting magazines lately. Reason magazine. Crikey. But there again, the hardest, but perhaps most important task in knowledge aquistion is to read material we diagree with. So I had a squizz. Not a bad article.
For something altogether different – did you catch Dani Rodrick’s blog article on “the new canon”?