Mason Gaffney wrote: > Krugman, wearing his journalist hat, was obviously oversimplifying a >complex business. Of course these questions are relative and, being generalizations, admit of great exceptions. But by the standards of the academic, corporate, and bureaucratic elites of the year1900, we are all Keynesians now; by the standards of the year 2000, they were all laissez-faire then. In 1884, Herbert Spencer in "Man vs. The State" railed against government interference in the market. Some of the targets of his scorn were the Chimney-Sweeper's Act, to prevent the torture and eventual death of children set to sweep too narrow slots; the Contagious Diseases Act, the Public Libraries Act giving local powers "by which a majority can tax a minority for their books." And so forth, covering a range of activities and powers that few today would find remarkable or objectionable. John C. Medaille