Great overview in the New York Times of Paul Samuelson's life and his enormous importance to the field of economics. It seems that too much has been made of Milton Friedman and not enough of Paul Samuelson over the past decades. Here's an excerpt showing a refreshing and all too rare balanced view of things economic:
If government gets too big, and too great a portion of the nation’s income passes through it, he said, government becomes inefficient and unresponsive to the human needs “we do-gooders extol,” and thus risks infringing on freedoms.
But, he said, no serious political or economic thinker would reject the fundamental Keynesian idea that a benevolent democratic government must do what it can to avert economic trouble in areas the free markets cannot. Neither government alone nor the markets alone, he said, could serve the public welfare without help from the other.
On a more mundane note, I learned in this article that Larry Summers was Paul Samuelson's nephew.
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