Robert Gassler wrote: > It [U of W grad school in econ] was not however like capitalism. My Soviet > econ prof described with Cold-War disgust the exams at Moscow State > University: the dept handed out twenty questions in advance, and students > would practice writing out stock answers from Marx. I thought -- but dared > not say -- that that sounded a lot like the University of Washington econ > dept. Only substitute Friedman and Becker for Marx.<
A friend who was in the USSR for years said that it was okay to deviate from Marx or Engels or Lenin in academic writings _but_ you had to quote one of them at the start of the paper. Of course, grad students were lower on the totem pole than established academics. In the old USSR, I'd guess, the grad students didn't learn any economics and then went out into the real world and found that the bogus quotation-mongering stuff was irrelevant. That set them up for the mass conversion to Milton Friedmania (that seems to have happened). In the US, on the other hand, many grad students didn't learn any economics and then went out into the real world and found that the bogus math stuff was irrelevant. But it doesn't matter: there are business groups and rich people who can pay you to do speeches in favor of _laissez-faire_ policies. It doesn't matter how bad your understanding of the real economy is: as long as you can preach at the altar of the Invisible Hand while rationalizing hand-outs to business and the rich, it's fine. Your income is assured. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
