Paul Samuelson Was Remarkable

Paul Samuelson – If any reader found themselves in college and enrolled in “Economics 101” (between 1948 and up to the present time) the chances are very good that the text book he would read for the course was Samuelson’s Economics: An Introductory Analysis which during the 1950’s became entitled simply Economics. He was and remains a giant figure in the world of economics education.He was the first American Economist to be awarded the Nobel Prize. He also won the Swedish Royal Academies prize in the 1950’s. And all his work and accolades came while working in the shadow of John Maynard Keynes, the most celebrated Economist of the 20^th century, and In fact it has been said that Samuelson was the first to be able to understand and present Keynes’ General Theory in laymen’s terms.   

Paul Samuelson

However, the most important thing to emerge from the theoretical kinship between Samuelson and Keynes is that Keynesian theory was disseminated university-by-university and class-by-class for over 50 years through Samuelson’s text book monopoly. The stagnation of thought caused by that fact has been staggering. 

Very few students outside those with an economics major have had any exposure to divergent thought on the matter.  

In 1999 Time magazine printed the following in an article about the influence of Keynes: "His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism." That statement is so comical that it could have come right out of John Stewart’s nightly dialogue, and that’s no joke.

A few years ago I read a compilation of articles by prominent economists titled Contemporary Economists and one of the contributors was Paul Samuelson. He summarized his article with (I am paraphrasing): "My goal has always been to help the common man."

He didn’t attempt to the find the truth, or to reveal some unknown gem of information, or to teach objectively. At heart he wanted to be a social worker but became confused along the way.  


The quantity of well meaning but misguided thought-cum-theory and the egotistical refusal to re-examine the fundamental premises on which he had built his work and written his text is immense, and the damage done is  in-calculable. 

The world would be a far better place had he aspired to follow in the footsteps of Mother Theresa than to have posed as a scientist.