Re: Where are the economists? (to the tune of "where have all the flowers gone")

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Brad de Long wrote,

> Walt Whitman Rostow is a very good development economist and economic
> historian. But I wouldn't call his tenure as Assistant to the
> President for National Security a big win...

I wouldn't call Rostow's once canonical _The Stages of Economic Growth_ a
big win as development economics or economic history, either. There is
more of a connection between Rostow's facile take-off theory and the
Westmoreland body-count logic of Viet-Nam War escalation than might appear
at first sight. Compare the following quotes:

" . . .  one can see in the conduct of the Vietnam war how the new style
of planning serves values beyond efficiency . . . McNamara, his systems
analysts, and their computers are not only contributing to the practical
effectiveness of U.S. action, but raising the moral level of policy to a
more conscious and selective attention to the definition of its
aims." (Fortune, 1967)

"There is every reason to believe, looking at the sensitivity of the
political process to even small pockets of unemployment in modern
democratic societies, that the sluggish and timid policies of the 1920's
and 1930's with respect to the level of employment will no longer be
tolerated in Western societies. And now the technical tricks of that trade
-- due the the Keynesian revolution -- are widely understood." (Rostow,
The Stages)

Or how about Rostow's "happy end":

"And so, when compound interest took hold, progress was shared between
capital and labor; the struggle between the classes was softened; and when
maturity was reached they did not face a cataclysmic impasse. They faced,
merely, a new set of choices; that is, the balance between the welfare
state; high mass consumption; and a surge of assertiveness on the world
scene."


Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Bowen Island
(604) 947-2213