One of the many joys of being a Business Week subscriber--aside from reading some very sharp reporters--is that I get to watch the race between Gary Becker and Craig Roberts to see who can come up with the most amazingly idiotic statements (Craig is currently ahead by 5). I just started reading Newsweek. Craig and Gary, look out! Here's the first paragraph of Sameulson's latest screed, entitled, "Why American Creates Jobs": "Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War in World War II, once observed that a capitalist country going to war had 'better let business make money out of the process or business won't work.' America followed that advice and won the war. Stimon's insight still applies in its peacetime version: modern capitalism won't work if markets aren't left fairly free. America abides by that axiom and, as a result, is a powerful job machine. Europe doesn't--and is a puny job machine. The mystery is that so many economists [ie., you folks] can't understand this." Let's put aside for a moment the issue of jobs vs. wages. Either Robby is saying that during WWII the U.S. economy was left "fairly free" or he's implying that because the U.S. govt stacked the deck so U.S. businesses made out like bandits during WWII we should have an unfettered market today. All I can say is, if somebody with a PhD knows so little about U.S. history--or has so much trouble with logic--then we really do have a literacy problem in this country. I have great respect for any liberal/leftie economist who can manage to stay sane within a discipline in which folks like Becker and Samuelson are not considered candidates for a mental institution. In Virtual Solidarity, Anders Schneiderman
