SAMUELSON FRIEDMAN

Broad-ranging dual biography of two diametrically opposed economists and their influence on current theory.

The author of a previous pairing of the intellectual forebears of his present subjects—John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek—Wapshott recounts the rise to prominence of Paul Samuelson (1915-2009) and his ideological counterpart, Milton Friedman (1912-2006). Both grew up under similar circumstances, the worldly children of Jewish immigrants, and both arrived at a nearly opposite view of economics, particularly as an instrument of politics. The two were well aware of each other when Newsweek hired both to write an alternating column on economics. Samuelson originally declined, having earned a substantial income from his textbook on economics, which remained a standard into the 1970s. Finally, he relented after being paid the modern equivalent of $98,600 for a mere 17 pieces. “Finding an articulate, young economist who would counter Samuelson’s viewpoint would not be easy,” writes Wapshott, but finally Newsweek brought Friedman on board. By then, Friedman had already laid out the bare bones of modern libertarianism, which holds that the free market regulates itself and government has little if any role in it, or indeed in daily life. Samuelson, meanwhile, was an exponent of the quantitative easing and other interventions that Keynes had brought to bear on the Depression. The two remained grudgingly admiring rivals for five decades. Though Samuelson considered Keynes the greatest economist in history, alongside Adam Smith and Léon Walras, Friedman remained convinced that “all attempts to temper the market, however well intended…were doomed because they hampered the efficient operation of capitalism, which, when left to its own devices, was sure to maximize the benefits to society.” Though Friedman’s libertarianism remains influential, particularly among conservatives, it is not unalloyed: He favored legalizing drugs and diminishing the military, for instance. Samuelson’s view was tested and found largely correct, though, with the Great Recession of 2008, when, as a British newspaper put it, “it was Samuelson’s prescriptions, rather than Friedman’s, that carried the day.”

Students of the dismal science will enjoy this well-written account of a clash of titans.