That leaves economics. Here | really have a one-man pantheon in Sir William Petty. | suppose that! am the only person to have looked at his portrait alongside Isaac Newton’s, in the Royal Society which they co-founded, and seen the two as intellectual equals. Mill seems a clear second, thanks to his superb paragraph on growth. The candidates for third seem well behind. Maybe Jevons or John Rae or Leon Walras. Time has not been kind to the teachings of Keynes. I would now rank his teacher Alfred Marshall higher. I like Myrdal’s magnificent ex ante - ex post distinction. Boehm Bawerk and the Austrian school are underrated. The pantheon
might have room for him.
Am I being too tough on later economists? We should not forget Schultz and Ben- Porath. Schultz’ greatest achievement, unless Mincer beat him, was in spotlighting human depreciation. That left me to ask where this huge flow goes. The answer becomes inescapable once we focus on the question. It gives the obvious solution to the age-wage problem. Everything in this book is obvious. Some of it, like that
solution, is the obvious but unnoticed.
Somebody, sooner or later, breaks the news about the emperor’s new clothes. You’d think Don Quixote would be the last to pipe up. No one in the world was more devoted to tradition and beautiful creatures of the mind. But it takes a fool. He was that, and so am I. Der reine tor. There have to be a few of us always. We'll get a few
windmills before they they get us.
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