Samuelson's textbook has delivered a great deal of economic wisdom. For many economists, the positive side of the balance sheet has outweighed the negative. Indeed, his defenders might ask: Might the United States and the West have suffered another Great Depression if Samuelson had not emphasized the need for automatic stabilizers? Did not Samuelson's heralding of the mixed economy curb the appetite of third world countries for national socialism?We will never know, of course, but it is humbling to speculate on whether alterations in principles textbooks might have led to a different U.S. economy.
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About Mark Skousen
Mark Skousen was a contemporary American economist and writer. Mark Andrew Skousen is an American economist and writer. He currently teaches at Chapman University, where he has been a Presidential Fellow since 2014, and the Doti-Spogli chair in free enterprise at the Argyros School of Business and Economics since 2022. Read more on Wikipedia →