I was of Tom's opinion that the thread had gone on too long and was
not going to respond any more. However, the last three directly relate
to our main point, which had not been challenged up to that point, so
a I offer a brief response, hopefully reducing the controversy.

Our NYT piece, was actually making a much more cautious and limited
claim than Anthony suggests (or rather, we thought it was). We did not
intend either to suggest that economists should be engaging grand
theorizing about capitalism in the manner of Marx, nor that tackling
smaller, well-defined questions was not what economists should be
doing. Rather, our point was that, in ceasing to think about the
bigger picture, economists had lost dropped out of conversations about
the type of society we want to create. To get to a better society will
no doubt require patient work on details, as Anthony and Paulo say we
should be doing, but if we lose track of where we want to get to, the
less likely it is that the solutions we come up with to the smaller,
better defined problems will take us there.

I deliberately refrain from giving any examples in the F-K part of the
alphabet, because I want to avoid stirring up more controversy!

Roger