Word: malthus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...toward youthful ecofreaks. "Poor old radical youth; it's hard not to sympathize with them," he sighs. But "pollution hysteria" generated by such studies as The Limits to Growth, he adds sternly, is another example of the odd doom consciousness that has persisted in industrial countries since Thomas Malthus, an early 19th century English clergyman who warned that population would soon outstrip available food supplies. Beckerman does admit to a certain pessimism about the next ten years. He fears unnecessarily slow growth, and blames politicians who deal with inflation by strangling economic expansion. The solution is not to stop...
...economics what Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man did for science and what Kenneth Clark's Civilisation did for art. Of the three, the professor emeritus from Harvard has the most difficult job. Economics is hard on the head and soft on visuals. Portraits of Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes are simply not as rousing as thermonuclear explosions or The Naked Maja. But the obscure theories that economists set adrift have far-reaching consequences. Said Keynes: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually...
...course on cultural history, admired the way "his thoughts progressed in a rational manner from beginning to end." A student who took that Barzun-Trilling course remembers most vividly the moment when some unfortunate victim cited the motto of the Order of the Garter during a class on Malthus. Said Barzun: "Honi soil qui Malthus pense." Said Trilling: "Honi soil qui mal thus puns...
Some of the thinkers who followed Adam Smith had made capitalism seem heartless indeed. The Rev. Thomas Malthus grimly announced that no person has any claim on society for a "right to subsistence when his labor will not fairly purchase it." David Ricardo worked out what became known as the "iron law of wages." His thesis: workers in the long run would get only the bare minimum necessary to keep themselves and their families alive. If they temporarily should earn more, they would breed so many children that competition for jobs eventually would drive wages down again. Ricardo...
...this year: Thomas Robert Malthus...