Influence
Samuelson hoped for and claimed broad influence for his text, stating, "I don't care who writes a nation's laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economics textbooks." Economics has been called a "canonical textbook", and the development of mainstream economic thought has been traced by comparing the fourteen editions under Samuelson's editing.
Economics coined the term "neoclassical synthesis" and popularized the concept, bringing a mix of neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics and helping make this the leading school in mainstream economics in the United States and globally in the second half of the 20th century.
It popularized the term paradox of thrift, and attributed the concept to Keynes, though Keynes himself attributed it to earlier authors, and forms of the concept date to antiquity.
The 1958 text introduced a "family tree of economics", which by the 20th century consisted of only two groupings, "socialism," listing Marx and Lenin, and the "neo-classical synthesis," listing Marshall and Keynes. This paralleled the then-extant Cold War economies of Soviet communism and American capitalism. This advanced a simplified view of the vying schools of economic thought, subsuming schools which considered themselves distinct, and today many within and without economics equal "economics" with "neo-classical economics", following Samuelson. Later editions provided expanded coverage of other schools, such as the Austrian school, Institutionalism, and Marxian economics.
Read more about this topic: Economics (textbook)
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—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
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“Life is made too easy. Mankind’s moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)