Some economists are good at political philosophy as well. Mises and Rothbard of course come to mind, but the good philosophers aren’t confined to Austrian school economists. Amartya Sen and Kenneth Arrow know what they are talking about when it comes to philosophy, agree with them or not. But some eminent economists don’t, and, judging by Nicholas Wapshott’s new book, Samuelson Friedman (Norton, 2021), the most famous American economist of the twentieth century, Paul Samuelson, was not a philosophical giant.

It’s a Silicon Valley truism that there’s little point to patenting a good business idea. If it’s truly good, it will be roundly rejected. More specifically, the potential of what’s a great likely won’t be understood. Think about it. If a good idea were already understood, it would no longer be an idea. It would instead be an existing business concept.

When it comes to policy debates, it’s now pretty clear that if you’d like to sound very quaint and old fashioned, be sure to express some concerns over the size of the federal budget and deficit spending.

Such concerns are now taken about as seriously by the average politician in Washington as is the constitutionality of the PATRIOT Act. Virtually no one cares.

This Friday marks one of the most important economic events of the year. But even Jackson Hole could not escape the threat of the latest variant, as the Kansas City Fed recently announced that due to an elevated covid risk, the event is to be held virtually.

The July/August 2021 Cato Policy Report hosted a friendly debate between Cass Sunstein and Mario Rizzo. Sunstein is a Harvard Law professor, a onetime member of the Obama administration, and coauthor of Nudge and other books advocating public policy applications of behavioral economics. Rizzo is an economist at New York University.