Well said,
I generally agree with you about the lack of wholeness in current economic
studies. As for whether Krugman is an economist or not I tend to look at
that musically. Von Dittersdorf was a composer but in the ultimate scheme
of things he was no Mozart who set the standard along with his colleagues.
Salieri is always mentioned if for no other reason than he was the Milton
Friedman of composers of his day. So I tend to leave the judgment to
history. As for the other things I don't make the distinctions in the
three that you do primarily because I see the processes at work in each of
the systems with simply a difference in emphasis, indeed I believe them to
still be with us today. As for the wealthy? How many do you know?
I guess it was all of that reservation Calvinism that I was around but I
just can't stand waste. Any family that builds seven mansions in seven
countries, for no other reason than the party seasons, tempts me to think
that they are useless. In fact, the whole idea of Utility in relation to
the super wealthy and the society as a whole makes no sense to me. They
don't grow and the poor don't either for opposite reasons. What is the
purpose of a society having either?
I'm afraid the meaning of life for me is to be found in growth and mastery.
Anyone who doesn't do something with their gifts doesn't make sense to me.
But I came from the side of the tracks that most of these folks would never
touch and when they had a President that was from a Trailer Park they
couldn't stand him and spent 70 million dollars to prove him inferior in
some way or another.
Today, I see misery everywhere. I see people's lives who are effectively
over as far as their talent and potential goes. And they are young. We
don't grow wisdom we grow opinions in the young and then they come back to
me and the other teachers after it is too late and try to revive something
that was lost to old myths planted not by experience but by books and by
having been born to the wrong family. Not poor in money but in spirit and
knowledge. They often speak many languages but don't understand the
meaning of any of them beyond knowing how to ask where the next meal comes
from and how to find the toilet.
Anyway, I enjoyed your piece and you are welcome. I was glad to find it
myself and even happier to post it once I figured out that the server has a
word limit on the posts.
Cheers
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 2:46 AM
Subject: Lucky Duckies
> Ray,
>
> I don't know precisely where you got Paul Krugman's article ("For Richer")
> from but it's a substantial essay for which, many thanks for posting to
us.
>
> Harry's quite right. Krugman points the finger but makes no attempt to
> understand, least of all, explain, the phenomenon of inequality. This is
> why Krugman is an economic journalist only -- albeit an excellent one --
> but not an economist.
>
> Indeed, in my view, most present-day "economists" are not economists at
> all, but only econometricists. They attempt to describe and measure the
> economy but not to understand it in any fundamental way. All the
> "economists" we can think of during, roughly, the last century have been
> either econometricists or economic journalists of greater or lesser
> brilliance, and have given insights of greater or lesser relevance. None
of
> them actually got to the root of the matter, least of all Keynes who was
> merely a Bloomsbury, quasi-Fabian elitist.
>
> For real economists, we still have to go back to the geniuses of the
> subject, to those who grappled with economics within the context of the
> other big issues of the human condition -- of demographics, politics,
> trade, disease, cultural differences and so on. They were polymaths more
> than merely economists. We have to skip over many "economists" of the last
> century who dwelt on, and burnished, one or two facets of the subject and
> go back to Marx, Ricardo, Malthus, Smith, Say . . . all the way to
> Aristotle (though there must have been a few before him who have gone
> unrecorded). Even though some of the true economists of the past may have
> gone wildly wrongly -- wholly or partially -- it is only these, with both
a
> wide and deep view of economics within the whole field of human activity
> who can be called true economists.
>
> Harry calls the pretenders of the last century "neo-classical economists".
> He also has his own hero, George. However, none of these seem to be
> interested in the other great human sciences which have also been
advancing
> during the course of the last century. Or, if they are aware of them, they
> haven't made any attempt to enfold their subject within the larger view as
> the geniuses of the past would have done. None of them has considered
> evolution, for example. Certainly no current "economist" wants to talk
> about anthropology, of the relative productivities of the three great
> economic systems so far (hunter-gathering, agriculture,
industrialisation),
> of the genetic motivations within all of us, etc.
>
> Just as the subject of economics in its heyday was not called economics,
> but "political philosophy", so I think that the "economics" of the future
> will actually emerge via another subject, and another discipline. A more
> balanced and deeper view of economics might well be supplied by a future
> anthropologist or a geneticist, for example, or some brand new discipline.
>
> You might well say: "But what has this got to do with the inequalities
that
> Krugman describes?". I would suggest that a relevant theory of economics
> would involve more than a passing reference to the similarity of our
genes.
> Or, in simple, terms, let's not demonize rich people (even though some of
> them may not be attractive specimens) because anyone of us would readily
> accept the opportunity to be very rich.
>
> Instead, we need a deep enquiry into the way that inequality has waxed and
> waned throughout the history and pre-history of man. It's not a new
> phenomenon at all. I get the impression that inequality rises steeply
> whenever there's a surge in productivity due to new energy sources or
> significant innovations, but declines in-between times. This hypothesis
> needs much more analysis than I can possibly give it here but I could
> illustrate this briefly in terms of the period Krugman describes by
> suggesting that the extremes of inequality in America at around the
1880 --
> the robber baron era -- was caused by the immense strides in industrial
> productivity that were brought about by rapid expansion of coal mining and
> railway transportation. The more recent increase in inequality can be
> explained, in my mind, by the vast expansion in access to cheap oil, and
> more recently gas, since the 1950/60s.
>
> The intriguing question to ask, of course, is what will happen to
> equality/inequality when oil and gas start giving out during the next
20/30
> years? It think we can't possibly answer that until we know what the next
> energy technology is going to be. If civilisation is going to continue in
> some form or other, the new technology will have to be a huge one in order
> to replace the enormous role of oil and gas at present. I think it's going
> to depend very much on what sort of investment is going to be required. Is
> it going to need finance in the main (as needed today in, say, in
> developing an oil field), or will it be a mixture of finance and a high
> level of intellectual know-how? If the former, then the new energy
> technology will throw up yet another surge in inequality, I'm sure; if the
> latter, then there's a chance that the new prosperity will be more evenly
> dispersed (so long as the already-rich don't monopolise access to
knowledge
> by means of intellectual copyright).
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ------------
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
