On 18 Jan 2005 10:06:35 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , F. George McDuffee
says...

Underlying problem is that the US economy has become so baroque,
arcane and complex

This is patently untrue.

Economics has been a complicated subject for many many years.

I'm sure that the roman economics textbooks were just as thick
and dense as our modern ones. :^)

Jim

He's talking about the economy, not economics. And our economy has
become baroque, arcane and complex.

(To carry your distinction back to the Roman Empire -- you'd lose.
Roman economics texts simply didn't exist because there was virtually
no formalized body of knowledge at the time.

Now if you want to compare a book about how to run a business in the
Roman Empire with a similarly complete text for our own time -- you'd
still lose. The Roman book would have been many times as thick as
ours, in part because their system was even more baroque, arcane and
complex than ours.)

--RC

"Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells
'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets
fly with a club.
-- John W. Cambell Jr.