Friday, April 2, 2010

Well, That Settles That

Tyler Cowen has listed from "his gut" the 10 books that have influenced him the  most. Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is not on the list. None of Mises' books are on the list. Keynes makes the list. Of Keynes, he writes:
John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.  Keynes is one of the greatest thinkers of economics and there are new ideas on virtually every page.
Which raises the question for me, "Why does Cowen even care  what Austrian economists call themselves?" If he can't put a Mises book on a list of ten books that influenced him,when Human Action is the greatest economics text ever written, yet finds room for Keynes and "his new ideas," I have to classify him a Keynesian, pure and simple.

2 comments:

  1. Perhaps Tyler Cowen has never read Human Action.

    That would explain a lot.

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  2. I agree. A few years ago, I had a piece on Lew Rockwell's page that dealt with something Cowen wrote about how the Swedish welfare state promotes liberty. (I'm serious. Here is the article and then my response:

    http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/10/why_i_dig_swede.html

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson147.html)

    It is hard to believe that anyone but a hardcore statist could have written this, but here it is.

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