One of the jokes is that if Parliament asked six economists for an opinion on any subject they always got seven answers. In 1961 Paul Samuelson testified before a Congressional Committee concerned with the “Impact of Automation on Employment.” He noted that several jests are made about the field of economics, and he presented one quip that featured the supposed mutability of opinions held by Keynes : Legend says that while conferring with Roosevelt at Quebec, Churchill sent Keynes a cable reading, “Am coming around to your point of view.” His Lordship replied, “Sorry to hear it. So far from feeling guilty about such reversals of position, he utilizes them as pretexts for rebukes to the less nimble-minded. Keynes is always ready to contradict not only his colleagues but also himself whenever circumstances make this seem appropriate. Keynes was depicted as someone who was known to change his mind on economic questions : In 1945 an anecdote about Keynes and Churchill was published in Life magazine. But since there are people who deem it creditable if one does not change one’s mind, I should like to get what kudos I can from not having done so on this occasion! Keynes stated “my recent advocacy of gold as an international standard is nothing new.” The following quotation is presented because it illustrates a situation in which Keynes did not change his mind, and he used understated humor to respond to the periodical : In 1933 Keynes wrote a letter to the magazine The Economist on the topic of a gold standard for currency. Here are some additional selected citations in chronological order. It is possible that Samuelson was consciously or unconsciously echoing a remark of Keynes when he spoke in 1970, but there is no compelling support for this because he did not credit Keynes during the television interview. “When my information changes,” he remembered that Keynes had said, “I change my mind. Paul Samuelson, the Nobel laureate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalled that John Maynard Keynes once was challenged for altering his position on some economic issue. His statement was reported in the Wall Street Journal in an article by Lindley H. Intriguingly, in 1978 Samuelson used a version of this expression again, and this time he credited the words to Keynes. Then I worked it down to three percent and then down to two percent and the AP carried a wire “Author Should Make Up His Mind.” Well when events change, I change my mind. In the first edition I said a five percent rate is tolerable. Different editions of my textbook have been quoted. SAMUELSON: I do agree with it and I suffer for expressing my agreement. My question is do you agree with that general assessment and if so, how much should we have and how much is acceptable?ĭR. Sumner Schlicter at Harvard shocked, I guess, the American Public after World War II when he said some inflation was not only inevitable but perhaps also desirable to promote growth. KIPLINGER: Returning to this matter of how much inflation we can absorb effectively, you may remember that Dr. Austin Kiplinger of Kiplinger Publications asked Samuelson about inflation. On Decemhe was interviewed by a panel on the television program “Meet the Press.” The transcript of the show was published the next day in the “Daily Labor Report” from the Bureau of National Affairs, Washington. He was well-known to students for creating a best-selling economics textbook. The earliest statement found by QI that fits this template was not spoken by Keynes but by another prominent individual in the same field, Paul Samuelson who was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in economics. Quote Investigator: No direct evidence that Keynes made a comment of this type has been located by QI or other researchers. What do you do?īecause there are so many different versions of this rejoinder I was hoping you might determine if any of them is real. When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. Once during a high-profile government hearing a critic accused him of being inconsistent, and Keynes reportedly answered with one of the following: John Maynard Keynes? Paul Samuelson? Winston Churchill? Joan Robinson? Apocryphal?ĭear Quote Investigator: John Maynard Keynes was an enormously influential economist, but some of his detractors complained that the opinions he expressed tended to change over the years.
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