Conservation principles

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jamie writes:

...
>My second exception will generate more controversy. Jeff Sachs has recently
>authored acerbic and telling attacks on the dead hand of orthodoxy and
>bureaucratic incompetence at the World Bank and IMF. In this effort, he has
>greatly raised the public visibility of certain deep problems at those
>institutions, well known to their critics for many years. That too, is a
>constructive use of high intellectual position, an exercise of true
>influence, and I'd give Sachs credit for it.

	As you doubtless know, Sachs is contributing to a change in
IMF World Bank policy that has been going on for several years--pushed
by Stiglitz and with strong support of the Japanese, whose own growth
experience does not mesh with the Chicago School's version of economic
theory.

>Nothing like that is going on at Treasury or OMB these days. It is of no
>particular interest to hear that Larry Summers is defending Greenspan
>or that Alice Rivlin wants to cut the budget.

	Perhaps there is nothing TOO go on? Getting the budget deficit
under control is one of Clinton's greatest successes, IMO. There
should be more of it. As Reich has been saying, our employment
problems are most likely structural, and have to shifts in the supply
and demand for types of worker skills. We should be working on these,
not suggesting budget deficits to pump up aggregate demand.

	 Keynesians will of course disagree with this, and will insist
on applying policies relevant in the 1950's to problems in the 1990's.

>Finally, I'm gratified to see the raft of messages on conservation
>principles, acknowledged and implied, in economics. They DO exist, Herb!

	They do not exist, I believe--either acknowledged or implied.
Which ones are you referring to? Moreover, what if they did? Suppose I
could show that Darwinian evolutionary theory implied the existence of
a conservation principle? So what?

Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx