There may not even be "social fixes"....
Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Devine
> Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 7:34 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:7979] economists in the news
>
>
> from SLATE's summary of other magazines:
> >National Review [a traditional right-wing rag], Feb. 19
> A piece about liberal economist Paul Krugman calls him "the
> smartest man ever to have a regular column on the op-ed page of the
> New York Times" before blasting him for the "latent thuggishness"
> of his columns. Krugman caricatures his opponents and then
> pompously dismantles the arguments he says they make (but that they
> don't actually make). <
>
> >New York Times Magazine, Feb. 11
> A profile explains how economist Richard Thaler has challenged the
> neoclassicist
> orthodoxy. By showing that people don't act rationally toward their
> finances-for instance, they'll mow their own lawn to save $10 but
> not somebody else's to make $15-he helped found a new field
> called behaviorism that could alter government policy and market
> analysis.<
>
> >New Republic, Feb. 19
> A piece about the evolution of Amazon.com says the New Economy,
> which was supposed to democratize the workplace, has turned out
> sadly similar to the Old. Amazon started with the idea that all its
> workers had talent and believed in the company and in their own
> mobility within it. Now Amazon outsources cheap labor in West
> Virginia and India, recruits upper management from outside the
> company, and intimidates employees attempting to unionize. <
>
> this fits with my understanding: there are no automatic "technical fixes"
> for societal problems.
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
>
