Category: Funny Business

I stumbled across the following three ballads by accident. My search began with an obituary search for Frank Knight’s elder brother Melvin Moses Knight and his younger brother Bruce Winton Knight, both of whom were professors of economics, at Berkeley and Dartmouth, respectively. I came across a few lines quoted from the first of the three ballads below (on price theory) and was able to locate a copy of what turned out to be a pair of ballads, the second (on macroeconomics) by Kenneth Boulding. One damn thing led to another and I next discovered a third ballad (on political economy more generally) explicitly inspired by the first two. The least well known of the three balladeers was David Felix, a Berkeley economics Ph.D. and later professor at the University of Washington in St. Louis. I include his university obituary in this post.

Incidentally, the University of Michigan undergraduate textbook that is referred throughout to was written by Fred Manville Taylor, e.g.,  Principles of Economics. 8th edition, 1921. In a nice essay about the life of Fred M. Taylor written by Z. Clark Dickinson and published in 1952 (Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives, Autumn, pp. 48-61),  I discovered that Bruce Knight’s contribution (The Ballad of “Right Price”) was written in the early 1920s when he was a graduate-student quizmaster for Taylor’s course at the University of Michigan.

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Obituary:
Felix, professor emeritus of economics, 91
By Melody Walker  August 12, 2009

David Felix, Ph.D., professor emeritus of development economics and economic history in the Department of Economics in Arts & Sciences, died June 13, 2009, in Bangor, Maine. He was 91.

Born in New York City, Felix graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1942 before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. He served as a lieutenant in the Pacific during World War II.

After the war, he returned to Berkeley, where he earned a master’s degree in history and a doctorate in economics. Before joining the faculty at Washington University in 1964, he was an economics professor at Wayne State University from 1954-1964.

Felix retired from Washington University in 1988. His research interests included economic development, history and international trade and finance.

Felix served as an economic consultant to the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. He had research appointments at Harvard University, the University of Sussex, England, and the London School of Economics. He received fellowships from the Fulbright, Rockefeller, Ford and other foundations for research in Latin America.

Steve Fazzari, Ph.D., professor of economics and a member of the department since 1982, has fond memories of Felix.

“I respected him for his intellectual integrity,” Fazzari said. “I admired him for his strong work ethic and professional accomplishments. And I will miss him as a teacher, colleague and friend.”

Felix is survived by his wife of 63 years, Gretchen (Schafer) Felix of Orono, Maine; two daughters; and two grandsons.

Donations may be made to the ACLU, 125 Broad St., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004 and to The Chamber Music Society, University of Maine, 5746 Collins Center for the Arts, Orono, ME 04469.

Source: Washington University in St. Louis. theSource website, August 2o09.

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Economics in Two Lessons

I. The Ballad of “Right Price” [early 1920s]

by Bruce Knight
Professor of Economics,
Dartmouth College

Great Whoopla, King of Hoomhomho,
In Privy Council deeply swore,
Some nineteen hundred years ago,
That Profiteering made him sore.
“Egad, it gets my goat,” he said:
“Two bits is too darn much for bread!

“Not only that my Kingdom cracks
Beneath these Robber Barons’ tolls:
The Lord perceives their heartless tax
And marks for Doom their greedy souls.
What think ye, Gents of High Renown —
Shall we revise this tariff down?”

The Council thought: “To buck a king
At best were misdirected gall:
Those prone to such a silly thing
Were never Councilmen at all.”
Their verdict was unanimous:
“What, ho! that sounds like sense to us.”

East and West and North and South
The heralds rode throughout the land,
With simple speech and ample mouth,
That Profiteers might understand:
“Hear ye!” they roared, with voice intense:
“The Price of Bread is Thirteen Cents!

“His Royal Nibs doth eke proclaim
That whoso charges more for Bread,
To brand his economic shame
Shall lose his ears from off his head:
Beware the Most Imperial Shears —
Charge Thirteen Cents, and keep your ears!”

The bakers, just a bit abashed,
So hearing, reasoned somewhat thus:
“Though wheat is scarce, and we’ll be dashed
If this won’t mean a loss to us,
We loathe to run the risk of Hell
And jeopardize our ears as well.”

The price was Thus in every town;
And South and North and West and East
The proletariat swarmed down
Like locusts to th’ Egyptian Feast:
The price of wheat dropped half a plunk,
And farmers would not plant the junk.

The days took flight, and fortnights sped:
Vox Populi exclaimed, “Immense!”
“Sic semper Profiteers!” they said,
And praised their Monarch’s Common Sense.
One dinner-time, along with roast
Whoop ordered up his usual Toast.

The Waiter blushed a crimson hue
Quite unbecoming such a lout,
And stammered forth: “Would Crackers do?
The Bread Supply has plumb run out!”
Roared Whoop: “Hast tried the nearest store?”
“Yea,” wept the knave: “There ain’t no more!”

Then waxed the King exceeding wroth,
As hungry kings are wont to do,
And, swearing by his doubtful Troth,
Ordered his land searched through and through.
This was the net result that night:
The stock of Bread had vanished quite.

Quick summoned Whoopla to his side
His meek Comptroller of Supplies:
“WHEAT! and AT ONCE!” the Monarch cried;
The wretch rejoined, with gusty sighs:
“There ain’t no wheat! And, worse, I fear,
There’s none been planted for next year.”

Last, to his Minister of State,
Sage Laran Gitis, Whoopla flew:
“Larry, thy brain, at least, hath weight:
What in the Heck are we to do?”
The latter, ex cathedra, spoke:
“Give heed, thou thick and regal Bloke:

“Next time your Cabinet and You
Contemplate fixing price, please look
At Sub-Head Three, page Fifty-two
Of Freddy Taylor’s well-known book:
You got yourselves in all this fix
By being Economic Hicks.

“Why, any college Soph would know,
Who took Ec One, and pulled a “D,”
That prices, if you let them go,
Will guide our conduct prop-er-lee —
Increase supply, curtail demand
When Wheat is scanty — understand?

“When every Jehu stocks his shelf
With Bread that’s cheap, but should be dear,
Important Persons, like Yourself,
May go without it, do you hear?
And Competition, don’t forget,
Will fix a Price that’s Right— you bet!

“Then, — there’s the Farmer — don’t you see?
The only Wheat that he will grow
Will be what he can eat; and he
Acts sensibly in doing so.
The Long Run, Whoopla — there’s the rub!
And, Broadly Speaking, you’re a dub.”

And thus and thus, and so and so
Into the regal ears was dinned,
Till Whoopla rose at length to go,
Quite vanquished by superior wind.
The chances are, when he withdrew,
He knew as much as Soph’mores do.

At any rate, he styled himself
A Proselyte of Lay-Say Fare.
Forthwith, his Empire, as to Pelf,
Beheld no equal anywhere.
And this became his proudest boast:
“I never fail to get my Toast!”

MORAL:— (Heh, heh!)

If you would see your land wax fat,
Don’t Meddle with the Thermostat!

II. The Busted Thermostat [early 1950s]

Kenneth Boulding
Professor of Economics,
University of Michigan

Protected by the hidden hand
Of moderate laissez-faire
King Whoopla’s happy little land
Lay prospering many a year,
As prices, neither low nor high,
Equate demand with its supply,

And Butcher, Baker, Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggerman, Thief,
Rejoiced in Truth as taught by Taylor,
And no misfortune brought them grief,
(Knowing that evils only come
From price disequilibrium).

But now alas a cloud arose
As you will often find,
For lo! although production grows,
Consumption lags behind:
The consequent Accumulation,
Producing signs of sharp deflation.

So while King Whoopla takes his ease,
(The crops are good, the weather fine)
As smitten by a strange disease
Down creeps the trend-of-business line,
And round the factory corners lurk
Long lines of people wanting work.

At first the monarch flat denied
That anything could be amiss,
For was not laissez-faire the guide
To every economic bliss?
No need to call the system busted —
It’s just a little maladjusted!

But as distress and trouble grew
The king called in his learned sages
(Those dignified professors who
Transmit the wisdom of the ages)
And asked them all to diagnose
These quite unprecedented woes.

They talked of costs, they talked of prices,
Of disproportions and of lags,
And various economic vices
That make for turns and dips and sags,
But all agree, the answers come
In Long-Run Equilibrium.

But then a rash youth spoke — Who gains
From this poor status quo upholding?
I learned my¹ Ec from Maynard Keynes,
Interpreted by Kenneth Boulding.
Silence more eloquent than words
Fell on those shocked and learned birds.

Mistaking silence for consent
(As intellectuals often do)
As if on self-destruction bent
The youth went on to air his view,
Maintaining, with an unbowed head,
That in the long run all are dead!

With pert remark and airy stance
He then proceeded to expound
The charms of deficit finance
In words more flippant than profound,
In Daniel Webster’s words professing
How Public Debt is Private Blessing.

It’s wrong to save too much, he said,
(Turning the theme in all its facets)
Income is from expenses bred
And public debt is private assets
And so (I hope you catch the drift)
Extravagance is really thrift!

Said Whoopla — if I feel the urges
To spend as freely as I like,
“Then² my extravagance, or splurges,
Will other money incomes hike?
Why! said the youth — Great ball of fire,
You Understand the Multiplier!

Fine, said the king, start public works,
Build me a large expensive palace!
In such extravagance there lurks
No hint of wickedness or malice,
For from my tendency to sin comes
A rise in other people’s incomes!

On every side the buildings reared,
Harems sprang up throughout the nation;
Soon unemployment disappeared,
Succeeded by a wild inflation,
And pretty soon our poor King Whoop
Was in a different kind of soup.

People of every rank and sort
Complain about the rising prices;
The country finds its dollars short
And has an economic crisis,
And through the miserable nation
Rises the talk of abdication!

A brief revolt among the scholars,
Forced the unhappy king to flee;
He, having kept his funds in dollars,
Became a prosperous refugee,
Enjoying the succeeding era
In basking on the Riviera.

The moral of this sorry tale
Is much too obvious to mention
Don’t trim your craft to every gale
Of intellectual invention,
And think, no matter what you try
In every ointment there’s a fly.

____________

¹”by” in original, corrected by hand to “my” in University of Michigan library copy.
²”That” in original, corrected by hand to “Then” in University of Michigan library copy.

Source:  Economics in Two Lessons, Michigan Business Review, Vol. IV, No. 6 (November 1952), pp. 24-26.

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[III.] The Ballad of the Sad Economist, or
Who’s the Fairest Model of Them All? [1952]

David Felix
Lecturer, School of Business Administration
University of California, Berkeley

A Regency Council was quickly appointed,
With praise from the propertied classes anointed,
To govern the hapless country pro tem,
Unrest and inflation to ruthlessly stem.
“Right men and right thoughts,” the Regency vowed,
“Will guide back Hoomhomho to normalcy proud.”

But what is this normalcy, if one may ask?
And how will the Council proceed with its task?
With Keynesian cries hushed in prison captivity,
Committed for Un-Hoomhomhonian activity,
Along with yet more Un-Hoomhoms of the trade,
The answer would have to be Taylor-made.

“Balance the Budget! Turn off the Pumps!
All must be willing to absorb their lumps.
Out with the Parities! The Wage-price Ratchets!
Tariffs, Pork Barrels, and similar gadgets!
Up with the Bank Rate! With will there are ways.
Come all aboard for the Happy Old Days!”

“But hold!” cried the Farm Bloc, “You’re going too far!
Surely Ag Parities are not on a par
With unwarranted aids and the dishonest pleas
Of Gold-grasping Business Monopolies!
And what of our low supply elasticity?
And industrial prices with scanty plasticity?”

But Business replied, “Such Populist impudence!
When National Unity most needs forbearance,
And an end to such rabble-rousin’ and scorchin’.
Have ye not even glanced at Life, Time, and Fortune?
The Invisible Hand in its moribund hour
Has passed on the torch to Countervailing Power.”

Then a chorus of voices was heard through the land.
“You fellows can laugh, but if over our strand
Passed foreigner’s goods un-tariff blockaded,
We’d never survive such a contest unaided.”
From the Tower, “The long-run adjustment . . .” “Absurd!
In the long run we’re dead. Or hadn’t you heard?”

From the depths of the Dungeon a thin voice arose,
“Let planning and subsidies cushion the blows.”
The voice died away . . . the impersonal force
Of the Price Mechanism rolled over the source.
But then from the Workers the querulous phrase,
“What’s all this talk of the Happy Old Days?”

And a crisp, booming voice was heard to sound off,
“Our appropriations are barely enough.
We could hardly survive any budget incisions,
And still keep intact a full hundred Divisions.
With no might in sight, oh, dismal our plight!
In our fight ‘gainst the Doctrine that Might Makes the Right.”

Approbational noises applauded these facts,
Most loudly from those with Armed Forces contracts,
And from those who remembered the lack of enjoyment
In the bitter old days of Mass Unemployment.
So for various reasons ’twas widely agreed
A Defense Budget cut could scarce be decreed.

“But what shall we do?” the Council now shouted.
“All our specifics are brutally flouted.
Tell us, oh, Taylor, what means to be had?
Or is there no balm in all Gilead?
If citizens dare not to forego their coddling,
It’s no help at all to show them your modeling.”

Then Taylorites answered, “Gaze ye at the World.
The Price Mechanism lies rusted and spurled.
There stalks o’er the earth a Great Disequilibrium
That keeps us from reaching our Mobile Millenium.
Check it! Or else all our plans are disasters,
And buried the rules of our Laissez-Faire Masters.”

”We’ll call a world meet,” the Council orated.
“Immutable Laws we will get reinstated.
Call Statesmen, Advisers, and Academicians.
We’ll get to the roots of our present conditions.”
“Normalcy’s indivisible,” said Taylorites, beaming.
“How true,” said the Council, and pondered its meaning.

So from East and from West the Experts all came,
From countries too numerous to mention by name.
All ideas were free to be talked of in forum,
Provided they met current rules of decorum —
Ricardo’s, and Smith’s, and the elder John Clark’s,
Though one had to be careful in making his Marx.

As befitted the host of this glittering Cabal,
The Hoomhomhos played with their Free Market Model.
But to their surprise this gambit was spurned
By others with backgrounds equally learned.
“Technical errors,” “too static,” “unreal,”
“Class bias,” “unstable,” “no sex appeal.”

“The problem is structural,” said Abdul Al Mism.
“We’ve starved long enough with your Price Mechanism.
Send us more funds and we might try your scheme.”
“But that will just make our inflation extreme,”
Was the Taylored reply, “Attempt first our scheme.”
Said Abdul, “That’d just make our poorness extreme.”

“What I cannot swallow,” said Viscount D’Abords,
Up from the Dockers to Chamber of Lords,
“Is bread at this twenty-five pennies a loaf,
Merely to nourish some kingly old oaf.
That’s scarcely fair shares and, dash it, not cricket!
This unequal right to a bread ration ticket.”

“But come now, M’Lord, you forget the supply.
You won’t get the wheat.” “In the pig’s eye!”
Retorted the Lord, “With proper control,
The supply will come forth, I’ll wager my soul!
Haven’t you heard that most income is rent?
It’s not hard to keep the supply curve unbent.”

“But Walras has shown the result’s a delight
When unknowns and equations total up right.”
Then forth came the haughty Econometricians,
“You fail to consider stability conditions.
Equational counting is hardly enough.
In dynamic relations things can get rough.

Inflation is only a manifestation
Of some inconsistent structuralization.”
Spake Senor Garbanzo of southernmost Chile,
“To bow to the world market forces is silly.
What our countries need is Diversification,
Or else we continue as low-income nations.

Political Strength means Industrialization
To cushion the impact of Boom and Deflation.”
The Historian spake, “You Laissez-Faire Boys
Are much too enchanted with outmoded toys.
Your model concerns but a brief passing phase,
Of which, by the way, it just points up the glaze.”

And so they continued in whisper and scream,
Shifting assumptions in the midst of the stream,
Till a Child, the one who with infantile crudity
Had shown up the emperor stark in his nudity,
Piped up with “But all your polemical flair
Conceals not the fact that you’re knowledge-wise bare.

Your Curves and Equations, your scholarly canting,
Do not give the Council the answers they’re wanting.”
Then all rose indignant at this Child’s presumption.
As one they rejected the youngster’s assumption. ”
Of course we have knowledge, profound and pervasive.
There’s really no reason to be so derisive.

But to say what it is, if that’s your suggestion,
Is in general form a nonsensical question.”
But now some declared that Truth’s praxiologic,
And were quickly denounced for illogic hodge-podgic.
And so Unity broke with a suddenness tragical
On serious issues and points methodological.

Despairing, the Council cried, “Give us a policy!
How do we wend our way back unto normalcy?”
With patience one uses for children sub-normal,
The theorists explained that their knowledge was formal.
“Give us your goals, arranged in a scale,
And we’ll give you the points toward which you must sail.

And if you can tell what it is that you’ll find,
That is different from that which you’re leaving behind,
We can give you the rules couched in language most terse
For finding out which is the better or worse.”
With this, all adjourned — it was getting much later,
And each went his own way to gather more data.

Said the Child to the Councilmen, still in a coma,
Having been overcome by the learned aroma,
“The Truth is an elephant; they each hold a part,
But to piece all together is still quite an art.”
Then up woke the Council and looked round the hall,
“But that doesn’t solve our dilemma at all!”

Said the Child, “When I’m older and go off to college,
I’ll explore sociologic roots of our knowledge,
And political aspects of modern economy,
And what is the source of society’s anomy.”
Soft from up high in the empty hall’s rafters
Sounded the echo of something like laughter.

Moral

Graduate students and hair-splitting profs
Can expound the moral to credulous sophs.
It carries at least the following sting:
A little model is a dangerous thing.

Source: Current Economic Comment, University of Illinois, Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1952, pp. 51-54.

Image Sources:  From left to right…
Bruce W. Knight in Eleven Professors to Retire. Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, June 1960, p. 19.
Kenneth Boulding at the University of Michigan Faculty History Project.
David Felix from Tourist Card for Brazil, dated 17 December 1962, copy at the ancestry.com website.