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Generalists' Generalisimo.

Article Excerpt
Quite evidently, Paul Samuelson is the member of our profession who is most deserving of praise but least in need of it. This note, however, is not intended as a generalized panegyric, but rather is particularized by focusing on the generally of his contribution. For he is clearly our prime generalist, a position by which he is deservedly pleased, and in which those few of us who remain dedicated to that direction are more than content to attempt to follow his lead.

But before turning to my central point here, it may be appropriate for me to offer some remarks on how things were when he was starting out. For this I am qualified by longevity, having entered the field in this respect, as in others, substantially behind Paul, though having watched us grow ever closer in age as time passed on.

Of course, everyone knows that when Paul embarked on his career the great depression was still very much under way, and certainly it had not become that bizarre incident in ancient history it is to those few of today's undergraduates who are aware of it at all. He had graduated from the University of Chicago in 1936, the year of Franklin Roosevelt's first reelection, well before the second major downturn of the U.S. economy in that depressed period. At that time, any job at all for the holder of a new bachelor's degree was a minor miracle. Even six years later, when I received my first job, my fellow ex-students considered me mad when I held out for $2000 a year--and got it. Five years after that, when I entered the LSE as...

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