Re: Samuelson = heretic ?

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

BTW, there's a major flaw in Samuelson, one that's not surprising: he confuses laissez-faire rhetoric or theory with laissez-faire practice. The latter has hardly ever prevailed and never in the US. "Laissez faire" policies are really blatantly pro-business one, usually heavily biased in favor of the big businesses.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine



> -----Original Message-----
> From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Charles
> Brown
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 9:49 AM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L] samuelson = heretic ?
>
>
> Jim D:The non-mixed economy (the pure market economy) exists
> only in the
> minds of economists, like the Platonic Forms. The real-world
> economy is
> merely a pale reflection of this ideal, so it's by its very
> nature "mixed."
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Oh here Samuelson's larger "discussion" ( 1969) reminds
> of something we
> touched on a week or so ago, the long term swing of
> capitalism between more
> or less "private" dominance, "state-monopoly", etc.:
>
> The Mixed Economy
>
> Most of our attention will be devoted to the special features
> of economic
> life fond in twentieth-century industrial nations ( with the
> exception of
> the Soviet system). In most of these countries there was a
> trend in the past
> few centuries toward less and less dirct governmental control
> of economic
> activity; gradually feudal and preindustrial conditions were
> replaced by
> greater emphasis on what is loosely called "free private
> enterprise" or
> "competitive capitalism."
>
> Long before this trend had approached a condition of full
> laissez faire
> (i.e. of complete governmental noninterference with
> business), the tide
> began to turn the other way. Since late in the nineteenth
> century, in almost
> all the countries under consideration, there has been a
> steady increase in
> the economic function of government.  We must leave to
> historians the task
> of delineating the important factors underlying this significant and
> all-pervasive development.
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB: This was 1969. I wonder if Samuelson would say we have
> swung back to
> more laissez-faire with neo-liberalism, privatization, austerity, etc.
>