The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics by Ian Kumekawa

Author:Ian Kumekawa [Kumekawa, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Business & Economics, Economic History, History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Economics, Biography & Autobiography, Social Scientists & Psychologists, Business
ISBN: 9780691163482
Google: VGuYDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2017-06-06T19:35:29+00:00

Pigou’s academic alienation peaked with his mandatory retirement from teaching in 1943 upon turning 65. As a fellow of King’s, Pigou would remain at the college for the rest of his life, but his years as a professor had come to an end. The board of electors unanimously chose Keynes as his successor to the Chair of Political Economy, but Keynes, swamped with war work, was “unable to accept” because of “other demands on his time.”58 The post therefore went to Robertson, who returned from London to assume his new responsibilities. Pigou had battled Keynes for influence at Cambridge for nearly a decade and a half, but ultimately, when Keynes was offered the position that Pigou so valued, Keynes was too busy with tasks in London he considered more important to take it up. It was a cruel irony and a bittersweet victory that Robertson, Pigou’s former ally at Cambridge, came back to the economics faculty only by default.

For his part, the retired professor was left with little to do. Writing to Noel-Baker in advance of his retirement, he noted: “It doesn’t seem proper that a viscount should do absolutely nil while the war is on. . . . Obviously the thing one would be most competent for would be some sort of investigation on economic stuff. . . . But there might be something else useful. Do you know of anything?”59 As time went on, Pigou became ever more serious. The following month, he returned to the issue. “Now about my job. This is a genuine enquiry. I don’t want to be completely idle while there is all this rank about man-power, and there must be something that I am competent to do. . . . Therefore I am enquiring of you whether . . . you have acquired sufficient status to do a little nepotism.”60

Noel-Baker was no nepotist. Instead of providing a job, he suggested that Pigou address himself to a different audience, one to which Pigou had already begun to turn: the general public. For Noel-Baker, the wartime optimist and purposeful reformer, was already thinking ahead to a time after the war. He replied, noting that after the war, Britain would need to make major changes in its economic policies. “There is admirable opportunity for making them,” he wrote, “but the opportunity will only be taken if public opinion is instructed.”61 Moreover, he told Pigou, “It must be instructed by people like you.” He ribbingly suggested that his friend write a “weekly article for the [popular, inexpensive, and generally conservative] Daily Mail or the Daily Express, at £50 a time” and that Pigou become an “economic commentator at £15:15 for the B.B.C.” Tongue-in-cheek, Noel-Baker added, “in general, you should no longer give yourself, as in the last, to the acquisition of filthy lucre, but should set yourself a new ideal—namely, GOOD WORKS.”62 The response was a skillful deflection from providing the requested government post. It was, however, also a declaration of hope for a future in which people were instructed, not just directed.

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