and impenetrable, Goodnight Moon rewritten by Henry James. The tone varies from condescension worthy of a presidential press conference to sly chumminess worthy of the current president. The professorial wit is duller than the professorial dicta, and these are dulled to unbearable numbness by the need to exhibit professorial self-importance. No idea, however simple—“When there’s more of something, it costs less”—can be expressed without rendering it onto a madras sport coat of a graph and translating it into a rebus puzzle full of peculiar signs and notations. Otherwise the science of economics wouldn’t seem as profound to outsiders as organic chemistry does. And then, speaking of matters economical, there’s the price of these things—$49.95 for a copy of Economics, fifteenth edition, by Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus. Economics has been, as its edition number indicates, in use as an Econ text forever—that is, since 1948, which counts as forever to the baby-boom generation. The book is considered a fossil by many economists, but it has been translated into forty-six languages, and more than 4 million copies have been sold. Economics was what the current leaders of international business and industry were afflicted with in school. And here was another shock. Professor Samuelson, who wrote the early editions by himself, turns out to be almost as much of a goof as my friends and I were in the 1960s. “Marx was the most influential and perceptive critic of the market economy ever,” he says on page seven. Influential, yes. Marx nearly caused World War III. But perceptive? Samuelson continues: “Marx was wrong about many things . . . but that does not diminish his stature as an important economist.” Well, what would? If Marx was wrong about many things and screwed the baby-sitter? Samuelson’s foreword to the fifteenth edition says, “In the reactionary days of Senator Joseph McCarthy . . . my book got its share of condemnation.” I should think so. Economics is full of passages indicating that Samuelson (if not William-come-lately Nordhaus) disagrees with that reactionary idea, the free market. The chapter titled “Applications of Supply and Demand” states, “. . . crop restrictions not only raise the price of corn and other crops but also tend to raise farmers’ total revenues and earnings.” Increase your corn profit by not growing corn? Here’s a wonderful kind of business where everybody can get rich if they’ll just do nothing. In the chapter “Supply and Allocation in Competitive Markets,” the book seems to be confused about the very nature of buying and selling. “Is society satisfied with outcomes where the maximal amount of bread is produced,” it
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