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Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/5/1999 9:39:00 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Pretty good. But I still object to Yeltsin. JLA

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/5/1999 11:01:00 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Gorby called and wondered if you'd perhaps confused him with the ballet dancer, hence his placement in the middle of the film media, music, and artists groups.<gg> Gordon

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/6/1999 10:14:00 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Definitely an improvement at the top. I'd move Teddy up and the generals out.

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/6/1999 10:30:00 AM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Still looking for Gordon Moore and Bob Metcalfe, who invented the Ethernet in 1973.

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/6/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3246

Neocon, I still feel your list is somewhat unbalanced. For one thing -- and this is a repeat comment -- I don't see how you can justify including both Hayek and Friedman, while omitting Keynes. C.S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton may be among your favorites, but to say they have had that much influence -- especially world-wide influence -- is pushing it. And I am not being unfair to your favorites: I said myself that although in my opinion Thomas Mann was the greatest of the 20th century's novelists, he was not that influential. There is a difference. Whatever happened to James Joyce???!!! (For that matter, where is Marcel Proust?) Too many Existentialists. Pick one, any one. And still too many film directors. Etc. Joan Edit: P.S. I just found James Joyce, so I take that back. But where is Nelson Mandela? A list of the most influential people of the 20th century is simply incomplete without Mandela, the arch-symbol of racial conciliation in Africa, and of so much else...

To: Neocon who wrote (1264)	11/6/1999 5:43:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

On Keynes, Friedman, & Hayek -- and on the difference between "influence" and "greatness' (note that the author is a Friedmanite): Who deserves to be the greatest economist of the 20th century? This question was debated at my session of the annual American Economic Association meetings in New York City last month. We polled the audience of about 150 economists, and John Maynard Keynes won. Keynes revolutionized the economics profession by contending that the free-market economy is inherently unstable and requires government intervention (through deficit spending, progressive taxation and monetary inflation) to keep it on the path of full employment. Of course, the audience may have been biased since the topic of the session was on Keynes's most famous proponent, Paul A. Samuelson. Still, Keynesian economics--the economics of government interventionism at the macro level--is very much alive, and therefore, Keynes must be regarded as the most influential economist of the 20th century. FRIEDMAN'S COUNTERREVOLUTION However, influence is not the same as greatness. Milton Friedman came in second in the informal poll and in terms of greatness, he exceeds Keynes. Time magazine's editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine, gives the nod to Friedman as the "economist of the century" (Time, December 7, 1998). And in a recent study of living economists most frequently cited in college textbooks, Milton Friedman came in #1 by a landslide. He was cited in all the textbooks. (Paul Samuelson came in a distant #12.) Friedman's contributions are many: He demonstrated that government, not free enterprise, caused the Great Depression (through a disastrous monetary policy); he showed that monetary policy was more powerful than fiscal policy; he made the case against progressive taxation, deficit spending and monetary inflation. He won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for these efforts. His best books are Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose (both still in print, available through Laissez Faire Books, 800/326-0996). Sharing the Prize Milton Friedman should also share the prize of greatest economist with Friedrich A. Hayek, the Austrian who studied under Ludwig von Mises. As Yergin notes in The Commanding Heights, Hayek made a convincing case against socialist central planning in The Road to Serfdom and other anti-socialist works. He developed a powerful tool for explaining business cycles, known as Austrian capital theory. His theory of knowledge and entrepreneurship is vital in today's global economy. He rightly won the Nobel Prize in 1974. So my vote goes to both Friedman and Hayek. mskousen.com