At first sight, it seems that Samuelson was simply trying to give Keynes a stronger analytical backbone, turning the art of government intervention, at a time of crisis, into a mathematical science. What could be wrong with that? The answer is: Everything! Keynes' greatest contribution was to alert us to a disarmingly simple truth: in a complex, financialized capitalist economy, it is impossible (rather than just hard) to derive, by analytical reasoning, the well defined mathematical expectations which one needs to "close" a macroeconomic model. Drop this insight, and you have lost all that matters in Keynes' analysis of the Great Depression in particular and, more generally, of capitalism's tendency to stumble and fall on its face. By transcribing Keynes' view of the macro economy into a closed optimization problem, Samuelson effectively poured down the drain everything of importance in Keynes' General Theory: a striking example of honoring one's inspiration mostly in the breach rather that in the observance. . . .
On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 8:37 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmela...@juno.com> wrote: > > > http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/varoufakis030111.html > > Jim Farmelant > http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant > www.foxymath.com > Learn or Review Basic Math > ____________________________________________________________ > Browse the web faster. Download Chrome > Browse the web as fast as you think. Give Google Chrome a try > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d27c0929e92e54aeacst05vuc > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
