Entrevista o emboscada hecha al Cardenal Bergoglio, hoy Francisco I

Entrevista o emboscada hecha al Cardenal Bergoglio, hoy Francisco I

    

    
    
    - Empieza a circular la transcripción de una entrevista que le hicieron al entonces cardenal Bergoglio en Argentina. En realidad fue una emboscada ejecutada por el periodista Chris Mathews de MSNBC.
    Pero Bergolio termina acribillando a Mathews de tal forma que MSNBC nunca la pasó al aire. Mathews, al darse cuenta que su plan fallaba,  archivó el video. Un estudiante de Notre Dame que cumplía su servicio social en MSNBC, la sustrajo y la entregó a su profesor.
    El plato fuerte de la entrevista es su debate acerca de la pobreza.
    
    El intercambio se inicia cuando el periodista trata de emboscar al cardenal, preguntándole que opinaba sobre la pobreza en el mundo.

    El Cardenal responde:

    “Primero en Europa y ahora en América,  algunos políticos se han dedicado a endeudar a la gente creando un ambiente de dependencia.
    ¿Para qué?  Para incrementar su poder. Son grandes expertos creando pobreza y nadie los cuestiona. Yo lucho por combatir esa pobreza.

    La pobreza se ha convertido en una condición natural y ello es malo. Mi tarea es evitar el agravamiento de tal condición. Las ideologías que fabrican pobreza deben ser denunciadas. La educación es la gran solución al problema. Debemos enseñar a la gente como salvar su alma, pero enseñando a evitar la pobreza y no  permitir que el gobierno los conduzca a ese penoso estado"
    
    Mathews ofendido pregunta: ...  ¿Usted culpa al gobierno?

    “Culpo a los políticos que buscan sus propios intereses.  Tu y tus amigos son socialistas.  Ustedes y sus políticas son la causa de 70 años de miseria, y eso tiene a muchos países al borde del colapso.  Creen en la redistribución que es una de las razones de la pobreza.  Ustedes quieren nacionalizar el universo para controlar todas las actividades humanas. Ustedes destruyen el incentivo del hombre para, inclusive, hacerse cargo de su familia, un crimen contra la naturaleza y contra Dios.  Esta ideología crea más  pobres que todas las corporaciones que ustedes etiquetan como diabólicas.”
    
    Replica Mathews: Nunca había escuchado algo así de un cardenal.

    “La gente dominada por socialistas necesita saber que no tenemos que ser pobres"
    
    Ataca Mathews...  ¿Y América Latina?  ¿Quiere borrar el progreso logrado?
    
    " El imperio de la dependencia creado por Hugo Chávez, con falsas promesas, mintiendo para que se arrodillen ante su gobierno.  Dándoles peces sin permitirles pescar.  Si en América Latina alguien aprende a pescar, es castigado y sus peces confiscados por los socialistas.  La libertad es castigada.
    Tú hablas de progreso y yo de pobreza.  Temo por América Latina.  Toda la región está controlada por un bloque de regímenes socialistas como Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua.  ¿Quién los salvará de esa tiranía?” 
    
    Acusa Mathews: Usted es capitalista.

    "Sí pensar que el capital es necesario para construir fabricas, escuelas, hospitales, iglesias tal vez lo sea.  ¿Tú te opones a este proceso?”

    - Por supuesto que no, pero ¿no piensa que el capital es arrebatado de la gente por corporaciones abusivas?

    -“No, yo pienso que la gente, a través de sus opciones económicas, decide que parte de su capital irá para esos proyectos. La utilización del capital debe ser voluntaria. Solo cuando los políticos confiscan ese capital para construir obras del gobierno, alimentar la burocracia, surge un grave problema. El capital invertido de forma voluntaria es legitimo, pero el que se invierte a base de coerción, es ilegitimo.”

    Sus ideas son radicales, afirma el periodista.

    “No,  hace años Khrushchev hizo una advertencia: ‘No debemos esperar que los americanos abracen el comunismo, pero podemos asistir a sus líderes electos con inyecciones de socialismo hasta que, al despertar, se den cuenta que se embarcaron en el comunismo’ Esto está sucediendo en estos momentos en al antiguo bastión de la libertad. ¿Cómo los EU puede salvar a América Latina si ellos se han convertido en esclavos de su gobierno?”

    Mathews afirma: Yo no puedo digerir todo esto.

    El Cardenal responde:
    “Te ves muy enojado, la verdad puede ser dolorosa. Ustedes han creado el estado de bienestar que es solo respuesta a las necesidades de los pobres creados por la política.  El estado interventor absuelve a la sociedad de su responsabilidad. Las familias escapan de su deber con el falso estado asistencialista, inclusive las iglesias. La gente ya no practica la caridad y ve a los pobres como problema del gobierno. Para la iglesia ya no hay pobres que ayudar, los han empobrecido permanentemente y son ahora propiedad de los políticos. Y algo que me irrita profundamente es la incapacidad de los medios para observar  el problema sin analizar cuál es la causa. A la gente la empobrecen para que luego vote por quienes los hundieron en la pobreza.”

 Si logramos propagar éste pensamiento, tendríamos esperanza que las cosas cambien para mejor!

Fundamental Concepts: Carl Menger

Joseph T. Salerno: Published by the Ludwig von Mieses Institute.

I share here a brief sinopsis of the article posted in the Biography of Carl Menger: The Founder of the Austrian School (1840-1921)


"All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This great principle knows no exception."

Menger-The-Founder-of-the-Austrian-School-18401921

Despite the many illustrious forerunners in its six-hundred year prehistory, Carl Menger (1840-1921) was the true and sole founder of the Austrian school of economics proper. He merits this title if for no other reason than that he created the system of value and price theory that constitutes the core of Austrian economic theory. But Menger did more than this: he also originated and consistently applied the correct, praxeological method for pursuing theoretical research in economics. Thus in its method and core theory, Austrian economics always was and will forever remain Mengerian economics.

Joseph Schumpeter averred that

"Menger is nobody's pupil and what he created stands . . . . Menger's theory of value, price, and distribution is the best we have up to now." Ludwig von Mises wrote that "What is known as the Austrian School of Economics started in 1871 when Carl Menger published a slender volume under the title Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre [Principles of Economics].... Until the end of the Seventies there was no `Austrian School.' There was only Carl Menger." 

For F. A. Hayek (1992, p. 62), the Austrian school's "fundamental ideas belong fully and wholly to Carl Menger. . . . [W]hat is common to the members of the Austrian school, what constitutes their peculiarity and provided the foundations for their later contributions, is their acceptance of the teaching of Carl Menger."

Menger's ultimate goal was not to destroy Classical economics, as has sometimes been suggested, but to complete and firm up the Classical project by grounding the theory of price determination and monetary calculation in a general theory of human action...

THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL AND THE STATE OF ECONOMIC THEORY ON THE EVE OF THE PUBLICATION OF MENGER'S PRINCIPLES

When Menger seriously turned his attention to economic theory in 1867, there existed a mighty though deeply flawed system of economic theory that had been constructed mainly by the British Classical School, namely David Hume, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo. To their undying credit, the Classical economists were successful in demonstrating that price phenomena--product prices, wages, and interest rates-- were not the product of historical accident or the arbitrary whim of sellers but were determined by universal and immutable economic law, viz., the law of supply and demand.

Classical economics, therefore, did indeed contain an embryonic theory of human action, but their theory was incomplete because it focused narrowly on the calculating businessman, the proverbial "economic man", who "bought in the cheapest and sold in the dearest markets."

To explain this neglect, we turn to the aforementioned great flaw in Classical economics: its value theory. In attempting to analyze the value of goods as a foundation for its theory of price, the Classical economists commenced by focusing on abstract categories or classes of goods, e.g., bread, iron, diamonds, water, etc., and their general usefulness to humankind.

They were thus at a loss to resolve the famous "paradox of value": why the market price of one pound of bread is almost negligible compared to the price of an equal weight of gem-quality diamonds, despite the fact that bread is indispensable in sustaining human life while diamonds are useful only for aesthetic enjoyment or ostentatious display. To proceed any further in their analysis, the Classical economists were thus forced to sever value into two categories, "use value" and "exchange value."

This was the unsatisfactory state in which Menger found economic theory in the late 1860's. It is true that a subjective-value school, which traced its roots back through J.-B. Say, A. R. J. Turgot, and Richard Cantillon to the Scholastic writers of the Middle Ages, flourished on the Continent during the whole period of the Classical school's ascendancy in Great Britain. And Menger himself, a renowned bibliophile, was nurtured and steeped in the writings of the German-language branch of this subjective-value tradition.

However, while writers associated with this tradition repeatedly emphasized that "utility" and "scarcity" are the sole determinants of market prices and, in some cases, even formulated the concept of marginal utility, none before Menger was able to systematically elaborate these insights into a comprehensive theory of the pricing process and of the economy in general.

The Theory of Value

Menger summarized the "general law of the determination of the value of a concrete quantity of a good of higher order" as follows: "Assuming . . . that all available goods of higher order are employed in the most economic fashion, the value of a concrete quantity of a good of higher order is equal to the difference in importance between the satisfactions that can be attained when we have command of the given quantity of the good of higher order whose value we wish to determine and the satisfactions that would be attained if we did not have this quantity at our command."...

Time, Property, and Entrepreneurship

Because Menger conceived the processes of transforming higher-order into lower-order goods (production) and of imputing value from lower-order to higher-order goods (imputation) as conjoint causal processes, he accorded time an integral role in both. According to Menger: "The idea of causality . . . is inseparable from the idea of time. A process of change involves a beginning and a becoming, and these are only conceivable as processes in time. . . . Thus in the process of change by which goods of a higher order are gradually transformed into goods of the first order, until the latter finally bring about the state called the satisfaction of human needs, time is an essential feature of our observations."...

The four functions Menger describes as the core of entrepreneurship are simply the praxeological implications of property in higher-order goods. This explains why, in Menger's view, the knowledge an actor acquires and the expectations he forms are not autonomous but are strictly governed by the structure of goods constituting his property and his chosen ends. As an "economizing man" who actuates and guides an uncertain causal process, Menger's entrepreneur is a dynamic actor who profits by actively seeking out the most valuable uses for his property and is not merely a passive "risk-bearer" whose profits represent a reward for investing in risky ventur es.

The Theory of Price

We now turn to price theory, the coping stone of Mengerian economics. Menger viewed the explanation of prices on the basis of the law of marginal utility as the final step in linking the Classical theory of monetary calculation to the general process of human want satisfaction. For if the active element in determining the prices of goods of all orders is marginal utility, and if entrepreneurs base their economic calculations on these prices, it can then be demonstrated that purposeful actions undertaken to satisfy human wants are the ultimate determinant of resource allocation and income distribution in the market economy...

CONCLUSION 

This then is Menger's greatest achievement and the essence of his "revolution" in economics: the demonstration that prices are no more and no less than the objective manifestation of causal processes purposefully initiated and directed to satisfying human wants. It is thus price theory that is the heart of Mengerian and, therefore, of Austrian economics.

 In a profoundly insightful passage in his eulogy, Schumpeter emphasized this aspect of Menger's contribution:

"What matters, therefore, is not the discovery that people buy, sell, or produce goods because and in so far as they value them from the point of view of satisfaction of needs, but a discovery of quite a different kind: the discovery that this simple fact and its sources in the laws of human needs are wholly sufficient to explain the basic facts about all complex phenomena of the modern exchange economy, and that in spite of striking appearances to the contrary, human needs are the driving force of the economic mechanism beyond the Robinson Crusoe economy or the economy without exchange.

 The chain of thought which leads to this conclusion starts with the recognition that price formation is the specific economic characteristic of the economy-as distinct from all other social, historical, and technical characteristics-and that all specifically economic events can be comprehended within the framework of price formation.

 From a purely economic standpoint the economic system is merely a system of dependent prices; all special problems, whatever they may be called, are nothing but cases of one and the same constantly recurring process, and all specifically economic regularities are deduced from the laws of price formation.

 Already in the preface of Menger's work [the Principles], we find this recognition as a self-evident assumption. His essential aim is to discover the law of price formation. As soon as he succeeded in basing the solution of the pricing problem, in both its `demand' and `supply' aspects, on an analysis of human needs and on what Wieser has called the principle of `marginal utility,' the whole complex mechanism of economic life suddenly appeared to be unexpectedly and transparently simple."

Schumpeter (1969, p. 90) concluded that, despite Menger's other substantial contributions, his "theory of value and price . . . is, so to speak, the expression of his real personality." If this is so, Menger's personality lives on in the flourishing praxeological paradigm of contemporary Austrian economics.

All the red emphasis are mine.
---------------------------------

Este es, entonces, el mayor logro de Menger y la esencia de su "revolución" de la economía: la demostración de que los precios son ni más ni menos que la manifestación objetiva de los procesos causales propósito iniciados y dirigidos a la satisfacción humana quiere. Por tanto, es la teoría de precios lo que es el corazón de mengeriana y, por tanto, de la economía austriaca.

 En un pasaje profundamente perspicaz en su elogio, Schumpeter hizo hincapié en este aspecto de la contribución de Menger:"Lo que importa, por lo tanto, no es el descubrimiento de que las personas compran, venden o producen bienes porque y en la medida en que ellos valoran desde el punto de vista de la satisfacción de las necesidades, pero el descubrimiento de un tipo bastante diferente: el descubrimiento de que este simple hecho y sus fuentes en las leyes de las necesidades humanas son enteramente suficientes para explicar los hechos básicos acerca de los complejos fenómenos de la economía de intercambio moderna, y que a pesar de las apariencias en huelga por el contrario, las necesidades humanas son la fuerza motriz de la economía mecanismo más allá de la economía de Robinson Crusoe o la economía sin cambio.La cadena de pensamiento que lleva a esta conclusión se inicia con el reconocimiento de que la formación de los precios es la característica económica específica de la economía, a diferencia de todos los demás sociales, históricas y las características técnicas y que todos los eventos específicamente económicos puede ser comprendido en el marco de formación de precios.

 Desde un punto de vista puramente económico, el sistema económico no es más que un sistema de precios que dependen; todos los problemas especiales, cualesquiera que sea su denominación, no son más que casos de uno y el mismo proceso se repite constantemente, y todas las regularidades específicamente económicas se deducen de las leyes de formación de precios.

 Ya en el prólogo de la obra de Menger [los principios], encontramos este reconocimiento como un supuesto evidente. Su objetivo esencial es descubrir la ley de formación de precios. Tan pronto como logro basar la solución del problema de los precios, tanto en los aspectos de la  demanda y el  suministro ", en un análisis de las necesidades humanas y de lo que Wieser ha llamado el principio de la utilidad marginal', 'todo el complejo mecanismo de la vida económica de repente parecíó ser inesperada y transparentemente simple ".

Bibliography 
Hayek, F.A., "Carl Menger (1840-1921)" in The Collected Works of F.A Hayek, Volume IV: The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom. Ed.Peter G. Klein (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p.62.
Menger, Carl, Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics, ed. Louis Schneider, trans. Francis J. Nock (New York: New York University Press, 1985).
Mises, Ludwig von, The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969), pp. 9-10.
________________, Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (Auburn, AL: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1985), pp.62
Schumpeter, Joseph A., Ten Great Economists: From Marx to Keynes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p.86.

Fundamental concepts: Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was born in Brno, under the control of the Austro-Hungarian, February 12, 1851 by aristocratic family of civil servants. When he finished his law studies at the University of Vienna, followed the family tradition and joined the government service in the Austrian Ministry of Finance.

While studying law at the University of Vienna, at age 20, he read Principles of Economics, the prominent economist, Carl Menger, and was captivated by these ideas the rest of his life. When he finished his doctorate, in 1875, began his studies to teach economics and economic policy.

From 1881-1889, he joined the University of Innsbruck and was appointed professor in 1885 and in 1889, he was appointed advisor at the Ministry of Finance where he represented the government in the lower house of parliament.

During this period momentum, in 1889, the new tax law direct taxes because, until then, the tax burden of the Empire was on production, significantly discouraging investment in productive activities. Subsequently took over as Minister of Finance of Austria in 1895 and then between 1900 and 1904. During his time as Minister, fought fiercely in favor of keeping its currency link to gold price in favor of keeping the state budget balanced, as opposed to government spending on national projects. He returned to the University of Innsbruck where he remained until his death, with outstanding students as Joseph Schumpeter and Ludwig von Mises.

Professor Böhm-Bawerk died in Vienna, Austria, on August 27, 1914.

Main Projects and Contributions

From 1881-1889, he published two of the three volumes of his magnum opus, Capital and Interest, dedicated to financial issues. The first volume was published in 1884 under the title of History and Critique of Interest Theories (History & Criticism of theories of interest), a comprehensive analysis of the interest and its uses. He also studied the theories of Carl Menger time, which analyzes the different preferences that consumers place on different days of consumption, differentiating immediate consumption delay the consumption preference.

During the 1880s and 1890s, he wrote notable critical against the economic theories of Karl Marx, becoming number one enemy of the Communists. His approach was that the capitalist system did not exploit the worker, the foundation of Marxist theories of labor value, explaining that exploitation theory ignores the time of production, where the capitalists help income workers, before the production generate income.

His second volume was published in 1889 under the title, Positive Theory of Capital (Positive Theory of Capital) focused on the production time analysis of the economy and interest that these delays created as a result of the investment needed to finance the processes of production, inventory and work in progress.

As part of the second volume came Value and Price (value and price) which elaborates on the principles of Carl Menger utility of his Principles of Economics, developing the idea of subjective value where goods have value only if consumers want them. These ideas were developed further in the third volume published in 1921 with the title of Further Essays on Capital and Interest (More essays on principal and interest).

The impact of Böhm-Bawerk today

Professor Böhm-Bawerk was a great promoter of the theories of marginality, the concept of marginal utility and interest analysis and production times were great impetus to the development of corporate finances.

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was one of the leading members of the Austrian school of economics—an approach to economic thought founded by Carl Menger and augmented by Knut Wicksell, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, and Sir John Hicks. Böhm-Bawerk’s work became so well known that before World War I, his Marxist contemporaries regarded the Austrians as their typical bourgeois, intellectual enemies. His theories of interest and capital were catalysts in the development of economics, but today his original work receives little attention.

Böhm-Bawerk gave three reasons why interest rates are positive. First, people’s marginal utility of income will fall over time because they expect higher income in the future. Second, for psychological reasons the marginal utility of a good declines with time. For both reasons, which economists now call “positive time-preference,” people are willing to pay positive interest rates to get access to resources in the present, and they insist on being paid interest if they are to give up such access. Economists have accepted both as valid reasons for positive time-preference.

But Böhm-Bawerk’s third reason—the “technical superiority of present over future goods”—was more controversial and harder to understand. Production, he noted, is roundabout, meaning that it takes time. It uses capital, which is produced, to transform nonproduced factors of production—such as land and labor—into output. Roundabout production methods mean that the same amount of input can yield a greater output. Böhm-Bawerk reasoned that the net return to capital is the result of the greater value produced by roundaboutness.

An example helps illustrate the point. As the leader of a primitive fishing village, you are able to send out the townspeople to catch enough fish, with their bare hands, to ensure the village’s survival for one day. But if you forgo consumption of fish for one day and use that labor to produce nets, hooks, and lines—capital—each fisherman can catch more fish the following day and the days thereafter. Capital is productive.

Further investment in capital, argued Böhm-Bawerk, increases roundaboutness; that is, it lengthens the production period. On this basis Böhm-Bawerk concluded that the net physical productivity of capital will lead to positive interest rates even if the first two reasons do not hold.

Although his theory of capital is one of the cornerstones of Austrian economics, modern mainstream economists pay no attention to Böhm-Bawerk’s analysis of roundaboutness. Instead, they accept Irving Fisher’s approach of just assuming that there are investment opportunities that make capital productive. Nevertheless, Böhm-Bawerk’s approach helped to pave the way for modern interest theory.

Böhm-Bawerk was also one of the first economists to discuss Karl Marx’s views seriously. He argued that interest does not exist due to exploitation of workers. Workers would get the whole of what they helped produce only if production were instantaneous. But because production is roundabout, he wrote, some of the product that Marx attributed to workers must go to finance this roundaboutness, that is, must go to capital. Böhm-Bawerk noted that interest would have to be paid no matter who owned the capital. Mainstream economists still accept this argument.

Böhm-Bawerk was born in Vienna and studied law at the university there. After teaching at the University of Innsbruck and serving in the civil service, he was appointed minister of finance during the years 1895, 1897, and 1900. He left the ministry in 1904 and taught economics at the University of Vienna until his death in 1914.

________________________________________
Selected Works
1890. Capital and Interest. London: Macmillan. Translated by William Smart. Reprint, 1959. Available online at: http://www.econlib.org/library/BohmBawerk/bbCI.html
1891. The Positive Theory of Capital. London: Macmillan. Translated by William Smart. Available online at: http://www.econlib.org/library/BohmBawerk/bbPTC.html
1962. Shorter Classics. South-Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press.

 Reference
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/BohmBawerk.html
Reference Blog Salmón 
http://www.elblogsalmon.com/economistas-notables/economists-notables-eugen-von-bohm-bawerk

Fundamental Concepts: Gary S. Backer.

Fundamental Concepts: Gary S. Backer.

Gary S. Becker received the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics for “having extended the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior which had previously been dealt with—if at all—by other social science disciplines such as sociology, demography and criminology.”

Becker’s unusually wide applications of economics started early. In 1955 he wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago on the economics of DISCRIMINATION. Among other things, Becker successfully challenged the Marxist view that discrimination helps the person who discriminates. Becker pointed out that if an employer refuses to hire a productive worker simply because of skin color, that employer loses out on a valuable opportunity. In short, discrimination is costly to the person who discriminates.

Becker showed that discrimination will be less pervasive in more competitive industries because companies that discriminate will lose market share to companies that do not. He also presented evidence that discrimination is more pervasive in more-regulated, and therefore less-competitive, industries. The idea that discrimination is costly to the discriminator is common sense among economists today, and that is due to Becker.

In the early 1960s Becker moved on to the fledgling area of HUMAN CAPITAL. One of the founders of the concept (the other being THEODORE SCHULTZ), Becker pointed out what again seems like common sense but was new at the time: EDUCATION is an INVESTMENT. Education adds to our human capital just as other investments add to physical capital. For more on this, see Becker’s article, “Human Capital,” in this encyclopedia.)

One of Becker’s insights is that time is a major cost of investing in education. Possibly that insight led him to his next major area, the study of the allocation of time within a family. Applying the economist’s concept of OPPORTUNITY COST, Becker showed that as market wages rose, the cost to married women of staying home would rise. They would want to work outside the home and economize on household tasks by buying more appliances and fast food.

Not even CRIME escaped Becker’s keen analytical mind. In the late 1960s he wrote a trail-blazing article whose working assumption is that the decision to commit crime is a function of the costs and benefits of crime. From this assumption he concluded that the way to reduce crime is to raise the probability of punishment or to make the punishment more severe. His insights into crime, like his insights on discrimination and human capital, helped spawn a new branch of economics.

In the 1970s Becker extended his insights on allocation of time within a family, using the economic approach to explain the decisions to have children and to educate them, and the decisions to marry and to divorce.

Becker was a professor at Columbia University from 1957 to 1969. Except for that period, he has spent his entire career at the University of Chicago, where he holds joint appointments in the departments of economics and sociology. Becker won the John Bates Clark Award of the American Economic Association in 1967 and was president of that association in 1987.

Selected Works
1965. “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” Economic Journal 40, no. 299:
1968. “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 2:
1971. The Economics of Discrimination. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1975. Human Capital. 2d ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
1981. Treatise on the Family. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Published in the The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Richard Allen Posner fundamental concepts.

Richard Allen Posner Concepts

Posner was generally counted as a liberal. However, in reaction to some of the perceived excesses of the late 1960s, Posner developed a strongly conservative bent. He encountered Chicago School economists Aaron Director and George Stigler while a professor at Stanford.[2] Posner summarized his views on law and economics in his 1973 book The Economic Analysis of Law.[2]

Today, although generally viewed as to the right in academia, Posner's pragmatism, his qualified moral relativism and moral skepticism, and his affection for the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche set him apart from most American conservatives. As a judge, Posner's rulings have always placed him on the moderate-to-liberal wing of the Republican Party, where he has become more isolated over time.

In July 2012 Posner stated that "I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy." Among Posner's judicial influences are the American jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Learned Hand.

Along with Robert Bork, Posner helped shape the antitrust policy changes of the 1970s through his idea that 1960s antitrust laws were in fact making prices higher for the consumer rather than lower, while he viewed lower prices as the essential end goal of any antitrust policy. Posner and Bork's theories on antitrust evolved into the prevailing view in academia and at the Justice Department of the George H. W. Bush Administration.

A 2004 poll by Legal Affairs magazine named Posner as one of the top twenty legal thinkers in the U.S.

In 2008, the University of Chicago Law Review published a commemorative issue: "Commemorating Twenty-five Years of Judge Richard A. Posner." A website, Project Posner, details all of Posner's many legal opinions. It was begun by Posner's former clerk, Tim Wu, who calls Posner "probably America's greatest living jurist."

Another of Posner's former legal clerks, Lawrence Lessig, wrote, "There isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person." The former dean of Yale Law School, Anthony T. Kronman, said that Posner was "one of the most rational human beings" he had ever met.

Reference posted in wikipedia
Reference on Legal reasoning 
Becker & Posner blog

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS: THEODORE WILLIAM SCHULZ

Fundamental concepts: Theodore William Schultz

American agricultural economist whose influential studies of the role of “human capital”—education, talent, energy, and will—in economic development won him a share (with Sir Arthur Lewis) of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Economics.

In Transforming Traditional Agriculture (1964), Schultz challenged the prevailing view, held by development economists, that farmers in developing countries were irrational in their unwillingness to innovate. He argued that, to the contrary, the farmers were making rational responses to high taxes and artificially low crop prices set by their governments. Schultz also noted that governments in developing countries lacked the agricultural extension services critical for training farmers in new methods. He viewed agricultural development as a precondition for industrialization.

A pioneer in the effort to integrate the economic analysis of the problems of agriculture in the context of the global economy, moved the boundaries of the study of the agricultural economy beyond the traditional rural management studies exploring the interactions between agriculture and the other productive activities in the economy. Its key work was the publication of "The Economic Organization of Agriculture" in the early 50s where he developed, lucidly, these ideas.

Three areas of economics predominantly occupied its exceptional capacity for reflection and creativity. They were the role of agricultural research as a source of growth in agriculture, the rationality of peasant agriculture and the role of investment in education and health (human capital formation) in the process of economic development.

He conceptualized the economic analysis of agricultural research defined as an activity where costs are incurred and generate revenue, private and social character and whose consequences affect both consumers and producers of agricultural goods. This line of thought was a pioneer and was instrumental in giving agricultural research entity as a activity of primary importance in the economic development process.

The analysis of the peasant economy, based on detailed case studies, Prof. Schultz led to conclude that the allocation of resources in this important sector of agriculture in the developing world, was guided by the same principles of maximization postulates the economic theory, and validated in economies with higher degrees of development.

Consequently, he concluded Schultz-rural poverty, it is due in large part to the improper use of productive resources, or the indolence of farmers, but to the lack of alternative sources of production, ie technologies that allow to increase the revenue generated by the resources-land, water, very little capital and labor-abundant habitualmenete available.

These ideas were expressed through loud and clear on "Transforming Traditional Agriculture" a brief but profound work published in the mid-sixties, called to exercise a pervasive influence on the conceptualisation of the development process and consequently the action agencies technical assistance and financing of agriculture. The slogan "poor but efficient" paradigm became the situation of vast sectors of the peasantry in the world.

The work of Prof. Schultz on the peasant economy allowed simultaneously illuminate another aspect of the economic reality of the developing countries. The study of peasant agriculture was established that improving the quality of inputs (seeds, fertilizers, machinery) and making them accessible to farmers, it could improve the economic condition of the peasantry. Labor being the most abundant factor in these economies, by extension then, the improvement of the productive capacity of the population investing in the economic agent was a natural path that would enable access to better job opportunities and better quality of life.

This led him to examine closely the role of investment in education and health as key to generate increases in the productive capacity of the population. Empirical studies on these subjects endorsed, again and again, the validity of these assumptions. In the last quarter century numerous studies have refined the validity and relevance of this approach. "The economic value of education" (1963) and "Investing in people: the economics of population quality" (1980) are two classics in this field.

He criticized protectionism by rich countries to their agriculture, noting the additional cost imposed such policies to the rest of the world community.

He believed in the value of ideas, struggled to impose their own, aiming always to improve the chances for a better realization of the life of every individual.

Among his publications were Agriculture in an Unstable Economy (1945), The Economic Value of Education (1963), Economic Growth and Agriculture (1968), Investment in Human Capital (1971), and Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality (1981).

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