As one of Lord Keynes's “practical men,” I must accept my lot before this learned assemblage as the “slave of some defunct economist.” This servitude, I hasten to add, is involuntary. As a dropout from Econ 10, Yale's principles of economics course in my day, I'd prefer to deny that any defunct economist, or, for that matter, any funct economist, has me in thrall.

Sadly, the denial will not wash. I have been reading manuscripts and books in economics for nearly three decades. Some of the wisdom and folly therein no doubt governs my day-to-day decisions as a businessman. I must confess, however, without a trace of chagrin, to one deviation from rational economic behavior. Attempting to purvey the ideas of economists to the general reader or, as I prefer, the common reader, is an activity that flies in the face of profit-making behavior. Most of the remarks that follow will underscore that proposition. Still, there are satisfactions in publishing that cannot be inferred from even close scrutiny of profit-and-loss statements. One of them for me is to seek out economists willing to endure the slings and arrows of scornful colleagues by writing in a form intelligible to the nonspecialist.

The task is not an easy one. As far back as 1963, I learned that from Arthur Okun, who had recently returned to teaching from a stint as a staff member on the Council of Economic Advisers. The early 1960s were, of course, the heyday of the new economics, and an American president, tutored in economics by Walter Heller and others, had inveighed in an eloquent address against some stubborn misconceptions in the area of fiscal policy and the public debt.