As we all know, Roger and Brad's column has generated all sorts of 
responses--many of them stimulating and illuminating in their own 
right--but it seems fair to remind everyone that the purpose of their 
article is to ask economists to engage again in the kind of big-picture 
thinking that Smith and Marx and Mill and Keynes and Hayek and Friedman 
engaged in. As they point out, the recent generations of economists have 
been trained to take the "dentistry" approach, for reasons that are not 
hard to understand. What Brad and Roger are calling for is for 
economists to return again to discussing what has become its fundamental 
subject, capitalism, developing a new vision of what capitalism is and 
means, and, as they state in their concluding sentence, "asking the hard 
questions that can shape a new vision of capitalism's potential."

Yours sincerely,
Paul

-- 
Paul Dudenhefer
Managing Editor, HOPE
213 Social Science Building
Box 90097
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708-0097
919-660-6899
www.dukeupress.edu
http://hope.econ.duke.edu/