49

Paul Samuelson’s Economics, Ninth Edition

Reviewing another edition of Paul Samuelson’s Economics is a task as impossible as reviewing in brief the present state of American economics itself. This spectacular best seller in the history of economic textbooks has inspired a flotilla of imitators.

50

Heilbroner’s Economic Means and Social Ends

All symposia necessarily suffer from dispersion and lack of focus, but often they are redeemed by being permeated by an overarching and significant central theme. This symposium suffers even more than others on two vital counts: its vagueness and absence of clear focus, and the banality and lack of importance of its central theme.

51

Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent

I am so out of sympathy with James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent that I don’t think a particularly detailed critique to send to them would be worthwhile. I recognize that there are some merits to the piece: a searching for methodological individualism in political science, an emphasis upon unanimity rather than majority rule, and a harking back to the constitutional system of 1900 as better than the situation today.

Bibliography

Aarsleff, Hans. From Locke to Saussure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

About, Edmond. Handbook of Social Economy. London: Straham, 1872.

Abramovitz, Moses, and Vera F. Eliasberg. The Growth of Public Employment in Great Britain. Princeton, N.J.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1957.

Adler, Felix. “The Relation of Ethics to Social Science.” In Congress of Arts and Science. H.J. Rogers, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Vol. 7.

Index

Adler, Felix, 82, 87

air pollution

actionable, 404

causal connection, 389, 393

class action rules, 416

discipline, normative law, 367

invasive interference, 399

Katz, Milton, 389

law and regulation, 404–05

plaintiffs, joinder of, 414

prosecution principles, 412

tort, 403, 413, 418

Lange-Bergson orthodox line, 830

Lange-Lerner thesis, 815–16, 818, 820–21, 829

fallacies of, 832, 833

general equilibrium, 832, 833

Mises, Ludwig von, rebuttal, 834

Lange-Lerner-Taylor, 829, 831

Lange-Meek movement, 813

market socialism, 815, 850

Marshall, Alfred, 806, 810

Marxism and praxeology, 802

Meek, Ronald, 812–13

Mises-Hayek, 812

Murray N. Rothbard Walter Block

Demand calls forth supply in the world of economic journals as much as in the “real” economic world. The proliferation of new journals since World War II has been a function of the increasing number of Ph.D.s and of the acute exigencies of “publish or perish.” But there is another category of new journals more relevant to this one: periodicals that function as a nucleus and a sounding board for schools of economic thought partially or wholly outside the prevailing neoclassical paradigm.

Henry Hazlitt

The monetary outlook for the United States—and for the world—was never darker than it is today. The federal budget is unbalanced by some $200 billion a year, and the prospect of getting it back to a balance even five years from now is very dim.

Leland Yeager

Insights and Exaggerations

Economists of the Austrian school put special emphasis on subjectivism. This article reviews why subjectivist insights are important, but it also warns against exaggerations. The latter part, while briefer, particularly warrants attention in Austrian circles.