I remember hearing that some economist was accused of being a Red during the Truman-McCarthy era because he had disagreed with the Air Force over the effectiveness of (non-nuke) strategic bombing. Is this story true?
Prof. Richard Ruggles once told us the story of the economists who evaluated the strategic bombing. The theory was that if the US knocked out the German ball-bearing industry, the latter's industry would (literally) ground to a halt. However, it didn't work out at all as planned, since the Nazis had lots of bearings (even though the Germans had lost theirs back in the 1930s). A lot of interesting people were involved in the anti-Nazi war effort: Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Herbert Marcuse, Sterling Hayden, etc. Is there a movie somewhere in that? On 7/14/06, Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I just read a fascinating manuscript about how accurate economists working for the military and the OSS were in estimating the workings of the Japanese and the German economies during World War II. Guglielmo, Mark. "The Contribution of Economists to Military Intelligence During World War II." These economists seem to be better than the military in figuring out how bombing campaigns could take advantage of the enemy's vulnerabilities. I was struck by the methodological differences between these economists and the economists that Philip Mirowski studied for his machine dreams. The former group included economists, such as Moses Abramovitz and Charles Kindleberger, whose specialty was more historical, although Milton Friedman straddled the two groups. The second group mainly consisted of the economists who led the movement toward abstract, mathematically based economics. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
-- Jim Devine / "Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force." -- George Bernard Shaw
