July/August 2010
Letters to the Editor
Freefall
University Professor Joseph Stiglitz’s article in the May/June CCT [Columbia Forum] is right on the money, and I look forward to reading his book. However, he leaves out (at least in your excerpt) another important factor in the ongoing decline and fall of our economy, one that has a seriously inflating effect on the GDP.
For decades, the late Columbia professor Seymour Melman ’49 GSAS criticized the effects of Pentagon capitalism and the military/war economy on the nation’s overall economic situation. Military production and the maintenance of the war economy contribute significantly to GDP numbers but they provide nothing to either the general well-being of the population or to the real productivity of the economy.
Since the end of WWII, the Pentagon has monopolized an ever-greater portion of an ever-growing federal budget (total yearly defense-related expenditures, including servicing the military fraction of the national debt, is now around a trillion dollars), which has made it the single greatest economic entity in the American economy. Professor Melman pointed out that as military production dominated an ever-greater proportion of industrial research and development and precision manufacturing, the United States lost the ability to compete in essential areas of civilian manufacturing to overseas competitors. When New York City modernizes its subway system or California begins building a high-speed rail system, the only bids for equipment or technical expertise come from foreign corporations. When half of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge is replaced, the fabricated steel components are shipped across the Pacific from China. But we can take solace in making the best (and most expensive) damn rockets, tanks and warplanes in the world — and it sure helps the GDP look good.
Dave Ritchie ’73
Berkeley, Calif.
Socrates, Not Sophocles
With great interest I read of this year’s John Jay Awards Dinner in the May/June CCT, where Julia Stiles ’05 was quoted as quoting this famous paradoxical phrase from Greek antiquity: “All I know is I know nothing.” Regrettably, this golden line was attributed to Sophocles, where actually it was Socrates who made this famous utterance in the Apology of Plato, a Contemporary Civilization mainstay.
Brian Overland ’04
San Francisco
Editor’s note: The error was made not by Stiles but by the editor, who heard it incorrectly and did not catch the mistake in print.
Harriss Remembered
I am a three-degree Columbian, starting with the College. As a student, I was fortunate to take several courses with C. Lowell Harriss ’40 GSAS, and as a professor and dean, to have worked with him on curricula and other academic projects.
What a truly fine man! A scholar, he cared more for what you learned than how learned you found him to be.
After completing a Ph.D., I joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Business and had the opportunity to work with Lowell on a number of University committees. When the Business School dean resigned in a dispute with the Provost over a tenure case, it was Lowell who convinced me to accept the job of acting dean. “I know that you would rather teach than dean,” he said, “and you can return to teaching when the President’s Committee finds a new dean. Right now, the school needs you to hold things together and provide a sense of calm and continuity. It may not be fun, Kirby, but it is necessary!”
Lowell always put the “necessary” first. I admired him greatly.
E.K. (Kirby) Warren ’56, ’57 Business, ’61 GSAS
Tuxedo, N.Y.