Someone recently sent me this message, and I was wondering -- do any UTC
Economics courses actually use books by this author?  Any comments from
ECON faculty would be welcome....

> Paul Samuelson's "Foundation of Economic Analysis" is the basic economics course textbook.  And yet Samuelson has been wrong in almost every one of his predictions and statements.  Consider these Samuelson quotes:
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> -- from the 1985 edition of the "Economics" textbook: "What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth."
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> -- from the 1989 edition of "Economics": "Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive."
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> -- from the 1976 edition of "Economics": it is a "vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable."
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> Prior to WWII, Samuelson predicted that there would be global depression after the war which never occured.
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> In the 1973 edition of "Economics" he predicted that the Soviet economy would equal the U.S. economy in per capita income by 1990 because it was "superior."
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> In Newsweek in 1981, he wrote, "Swift decontrol of energy prices will certainly add to the inflation rates consumers will endure from 1981 to 1983." Of course, nothing of the kind happened.
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> And, in the February 13, 1967 edition of Newsweek, he wrote about Social Security: "The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound...How is this possible? it stems from the fact that the national product is growing at compound interest and can be expected to do so as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population...A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever contrived."
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> And we wonder why American students -- and American adults -- don't understand economics ... hmm.