Reading The Samuelson Sampler, it is extraordinary to realize just how confident economists of his generation were that the New Economics (as the Keynesian approach was called in America) had solved the problem of depression and mass unemployment. As Samuelson put it in his 1973 introduction, “the specter of a repetition of the depression of the 1930s has been reduced to a negligible probability.”
读了《萨缪尔逊取样器》，一个突出的感觉是发现他这一代经济学家对新经济学（New Economics，美国对凯恩斯主义方法的称呼）解决了衰退和大规模失业问题抱有怎样的信心。萨缪尔逊在其1973年的引论中说，“20世纪30年代萧条死灰复燃的幽灵已经降低到了负概率。”