It turns out that Paul Samuelson did submit one more column to Newsweek, after Milton Friedman’s “Open Letter on Grants” -- and the affair unfolded in 1981, not 1984 as I wrote. Thanks once again to Samuelson biographer Roger Backhouse, whose files are way better than mine.
The reason Samuelson gave for his decision to quit his long-standing column stemmed from the magazine’s decision to spike without telling him the column he had turned in, about John Kenneth Galbraith’s memoirs. Newsweek had reviewed the book “rather thoroughly” three weeks before, the editor explained.
Is it possible Samuelson seized on the magazine’s slight as a fig leaf to conceal his irritation at Friedman’s proposal? The week before, the Chicagoan had called on the Reagan administration to sharply cut back on National Science Foundation’s grants to economists? Perhaps. In matters requiring diplomacy, the MIT professor was an artful dodger. But Backhouse points out that Samuelson turned 65 that year. He’d been dueling with Friedman in Newsweek since 1966.
Whatever the case, it was an abrupt way to end a momentous public debate.
dw
The debate might have been interesting. Unfortunally I have not seen it.
I remember hearing that Samuelson was the first to call Milton after he had bypass surgery in the mid seventies.