Volume 27, Number 2 · February 21, 1980
The New Economics
By Robert L. Heilbroner
A Guide to Post-Keynesian Economics
edited by Alfred S. Eichner
M.E. Sharpe, 202 pp., $4.95 (paper)
I suppose that philosophy is still queen of the social sciences, but I fear that economics has become the knave. The awed regard in which the discipline was once held has given way to something bordering on disrespect. This change in public esteem primarily arises from the inability of the economics profession to give a coherent explanation for, and therefore to prescribe a workable policy against, inflation. But this is by no means the only problem on its hands. Following the advice of the profession, the dollar was finally allowed to 'float' in 1971, but far from removing the dollar crisis, floating seems to have worsened it. Heeding the best economic strategies, we have sought for an entire generation to spur economic development, but the World Bank has recently admitted that 40 percent of the population of the 'developing' lands still lives in what the Bank calls 'absolute poverty.'[1] Meanwhile economists confess to their ignorance and impotence with regard to the decline in American productivity, the emergence of an alienated and unemployed underclass, spreading urban blight, threatening technological displacement, and murky economic prospects.
Review, 3928 words
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