Humanistic Economics

...much of the world runs as Veblen described—though perhaps less now than a century ago...

...He is especially good on monetary policy: Of the recent experience he says, in a tone that Milton Friedman would, one hopes, find annoying, that "It took four years of depression and all the suffering that entailed to bring inflation down to a rate that, being the lowest in ten years, elicited much self-congratulation but was actually substantially higher than the trend of the decades before the Federal Reserve Board began to worry about the money supply...

...The natural resources of South America are not inferior to those of the United States, but the wealth of the two regions is vastly different...

...At the end of World War II, Germany was in ruins, but in short order it became again one of the most prosperous nations of the world...

...Contemplating the German devastation from the enlightened precincts of the State Department in 1946, I one day read the foregoing extract from Mill to my colleagues concerned with German economic affairs...

...What is certainly not in doubt is that Veblen would have strongly approved of Brockway's book...

...The book is subtitled What Went Wrong and Why and Some Things to Do about It...

...Among his books are "The New Industrial State" and "The Affluent Society...

...This is to say he is widely read on the subject—more so, I suspect, than most professionals—and is without any theological, liturgical, or other obligation to respect, celebrate, or believe what he reads...

...I have some reservations, however, as to Brockway's position on both protection and inflation...

...Samuel Johnson's observation, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money...

...No doubt in his years as a publisher he learned to add such claims to encourage the customers and to show that the volume was satisfactorily affirmative in tone...

...But, as ever, there are exceptions: George Brockway has written a singularly agreeable example...

...the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war...

...Nor is accumulated capital crucial...

...Warburg professor of economics emeritus at Harvard University, is a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board...

...As John Stuart Mill pointed out, capital is constantly being consumed and reproduced, and this fact explains 'what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation...

...Like dentistry, the later works of Thomas Hardy, and the recent offerings of Richard Nixon, they are something to be suffered for their possible benefit or not suffered at all...

...in all modern depressions, recessions, or growthrcorrections as variously they are called, we never miss the goods that are not produced...

...by John Kenneth Galbraith Books on economics are not normally recommended for the pure pleasure that emerges from the reading...

...Brockway also considers the grave ambiguities associated with the economic concept of a good—"Home cooking of the highest quality is not an economic good, but hash slinging of junk food is an economic good...

...And he is less detailed and explicit on inflation control—including control of the wage/price spiral to which he assigns central importance—than one might wish...

...In Economics, he covers a wide range of topics beginning with the origins of economics and its psychological roots, including a thoughtful reflection on Dr...

...I wavered a little in his defense...

...What he does offer is a greatly enlightened commentary on the current definitions, assumptions, concepts, conclusions, and, above all, cliches of contemporary economics...

...They did not doubt that Mill was now wrong...

...This last, I think, is a most imJohn Kenneth Galbraith, PaulM...

...Brockway, a successful book publisher—for many years an editor and chief executive at W. W. Norton & Company and more recently (and no doubt more decoratively) the President of the board of governors of Yale University Press—is a devoted amateur of economics...

...The land of India is far richer than that of Japan, but the comparative wealth of the two nations is reversed...

...One economist whom Brockway cites with great approval is Thorstein Veblen...

...Home handy work is not an economic good, but hired plumbing is...

...Additionally, he writes with appealing clarity and, when encountering the more compelling absurdities of our faith, a nice capacity for amusement...

...He then accords a highly appropriate rebuke to Jeremy Bentham and tells why economics, the efforts of our mathematicians to the contrary, can never be a value-free discipline...

...He goes on to consider exchange, money, and labor, the latter reflection leading to the conclusion, "Labor is not a commodity, or a standard, or a means to an ulterior end, but an end in itself...

...This is hard on people even poorer than those so protected...

...We miss only the opportunities for the labor—for the jobs—that are not provided...

...Next Brockway offers his thoughts on speculation, property, protection, economic and social justice, inflation, international trade, and banking...

...I weep for the secular humanism which would keep one from imagining that somewhere in the next world Veblen is sitting on the Golden Steps enjoying this volume or, as an alternative possibility, trying desperately to keep it away from the flames...

...He is also very good on distributive policy and social justice, including the numerous philosophical designs now in use to get the poor off the public conscience...

...Then in a few paragraphs he discounts the importance of both goods and their accumulation as capital stock as the source of wealth: "The wealth of a nation consists not in its mass of material things but in its system...

...There is no systematic view of the economy in Economics, nothing that could be called a Brockway system...

...I cite the above paragraph with some pleasure...

...What counts is system...

...That claim goes a bit far...

...While I do not make a living advocating free trade, I am less than happy with his proposals for tariffs on low-wage imports from the poor countries...

...BOOKS portant point...