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Very good sentences
The first lesson in economics is: things are often not what they seem.
That's a sentence in the first edition of Samuelson's Principles. Justin Wolfers discusses the book here. Part of chapter one is on-line here. Use the search function. Here (search for "communism") Samuelson says that economics cannot pass judgment on whether American society will go the "revolutionary" path (toward communism) or the "evolutionary" path, or whether Russia indicates the "folly" or the "wisdom" of communism. Indeed things are not always what they seem. You can have lots of fun with the search service.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 26, 2008 at 10:51 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
I have one big problem with reading blogs (especially this one) in my RSS reader. If I happen to read a post right around when it was posted, I miss out on any good comments that may end up being posted during the day. Of course, this problem exists even were I to read the posts on the blog itself, but thanks to RSS, I tend to read posts from certain blogs fairly often during a day and usually not much later after they're posted.
I wonder if there's a way to get a daily digest of comments as either an RSS feed or email. Of course, best would be if say, Google Reader would let me flag posts that I like and use that to then maintain a separate RSS feed for comments?
Posted by: mkamdar at Aug 26, 2008 11:24:14 AM
Anyone feel free to answer. I am a Public Policy student that has taken quite a few Ph.D. Econ courses and read most of the seminal public finance articles. I always see citations to classic books though, which I have not read like Marshall's principles, or Musgrave's Public Finance text. I want to know what older "classics" like these are heavy on argument (like Friedman or Hayek) as opposed to those that would read more like a graduate level textbook today with model after model.
Posted by: Robin Rhea at Aug 26, 2008 11:58:02 AM
mkamdar: Some pieces blog software offers the ability to provide feeds of individual posts. This allows you to be updated of any new comments of a particular post that interests you. That would be a great addition to this (or any) blog. Currently, I just bookmark the post in Firefox and come back to it tomrrow.
Posted by: Levi at Aug 26, 2008 12:58:20 PM
Not what it seems means mostly the fallacy of composition is noticed.
If everybody stands on their toes, everybody can see better.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at Aug 26, 2008 1:17:12 PM
Second lesson: skim milk masquerades as cream.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 26, 2008 6:47:08 PM
I thought the first lesson in economics was: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Posted by: asiequana at Aug 26, 2008 8:57:44 PM
"feel free to answer". As if anyone is going to supply the "Public Policy student" (capitalization included) with the summary of his own hard work -- regardless of whether he feels free or not. Don't Public Policy students get library cards with their 80,000 dollar tuition? I suppose it would delay the fun of legislating our rights away with our own tax-dollars. Public Policy indeed.
Posted by: A Young Curmudgeon at Aug 27, 2008 2:09:42 AM
