innumeracy

[James Devine]

>I'm reminded of a reference in a Nation article
>long ago.  Somebody had written an ignorant
>article criticizing public choice theory.  (It
>is possible to write a learned one criticizing
>it, but that's another story.)  In response to
>a reader's objection, the reply cast aspersions
>on cold-hearted mathematics and the analysis
>of politics by use of a calculator.

Unfortunately, some Marxists can be as bad (if not worse). EK. Hunt told me
the story of a grad student at UC-Riverside who encountered what at the
time was considered to be Marx's mistake in the presentation of the
so-called "transformation problem" in vol. III of CAPITAL. This student's
response: it's not Marx's mistake; the problem was with bourgeois
mathematics. 

Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html