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To: Ilaine who wrote (187)	4/13/2001 11:35:59 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

CB- I'm distrustful of economic books that attempt to quantify human behavior via mathematical equations. I don't really think it can be done. For example, an attempt to quantify the percentage of unemployment that is consistent with overall growth. The question is absurd. It tells you nothing about the people who are unemployed - it assumes everyone is equal, when they aren't. ... In that case, your outlook is in agreement with the Austrians, who don't normally do equations or graphs either, just dense a priori logic in how individuals choose and act. Unemployment is primarily the result of minimum wage laws and welfare, along with the unholy alliance between government and organized labor that rewards the few at the expense of everyone else. In a free market for labor, some businesses would employ highly skilled and productive workers at high wage rates and other businesses would employ those willing workers of lower skills and productivity at lower wage rates. In both cases productivity and wages can be increased by the addition of capital. Regards, Don

To: Ilaine who wrote (187)	4/13/2001 9:31:27 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

Reducing Schumpeter to "waves" is absurd. I have four of his books, and his interest in waves is mostly in his book on the business cycle. Here he does exhibit a belief in Kondratieff, Kitchen, and whatever that third wave cycle is. It would be far more absurd to discover someone declaring that there will be no more business cycles, which is indeed what we seem to find at every market top. All that Schumpeter was seeking to do was to find some underlying regularity in the business cycle. Schumpeter can't be accused of quantifying anything, since he was one of the last prominent economists who didn't practice econometrics. That's why he's a joy to read compared to more recent equation riddled economic writing. But he did seem to be impressed with econometrics, which was new to the field at that time. I wonder if he would have been so impressed had he lived longer. Schumpeter indeed thought that new inventions and innovative methods drove the business cycle. The term "creative destruction" is from Schumpeter. And he, unlike his contemporary Keynes, understood and wrote of the vital role played by entrepreneurs, capital formation, and so forth.