Remarks at the Memorial Service for Robert Eisner

Northwestern University Chapel

January 24, 1999

James K. Galbraith

The Galbraiths, economist father and son, love the Eisners, economist father and daughter. A letter from my father to Edith, dated December 11, 1998, reads in part:

"I simply regarded Bob Eisner as the best and publicly the most effective economist of our time."

Two years ago, in a happier moment, I sent Bob Eisner a routine status check on my household:

"Things are well here as we await the arrival of a big Christmas package, now nearing completion in a belly near me."

The reply was instant:

"Mazeltov! So what is IT? Boy or girl? Economist or nobody?"

In keeping with my convictions and my wife’s not altogether voluntary upbringing in China, I answered:

"We’re expecting a Keynesian Red Guard."

Again, there came the response:

"Great to hear that the family is moving in right -- I mean good -- directions. Keynes is fine, but keep the Red Guards under control, as I’m sure you will."

Arch is a pretty good word for the essential Eisner. He was dry, exact, droll. Dryness and exactitude were features of his scientific mind, of his preoccupation with measurement, with evidence, with getting the accounting right, with getting the institutional details right, with taking inferences as far as one could reasonably take them, but not further. His topics -- investment, capital accounting and budgeting, macroeconomic structure, the design of tax law, and many others -- required his precision of thought.

Drollness certainly helped the message go down. I remember a symposium at which Bob did me the honor of commenting on my paper. My own speech, admittedly, wandered a bit. Bob began his remarks with "That was a hard act to follow." He said it just so, and I believe most of the audience heard it one way, while I heard it the other. I had enough sense not to ask him afterwards what he really meant.

One sometimes encounters in economics, as a rhetorical device, the assertion that "all economists agree" or "professional economists agree" or, sometimes "serious economists agree" -- that low unemployment produces rising inflation, that social security must be saved by cutting it, that deficits are bad and that budgets should be balanced.

To these assertions in recent years there has been a great rebuttal: "Eisner does not agree." I have used it dozens of times. It has been the most simple, direct, versatile and unanswerable argument it has ever been my pleasure to use. "Eisner does not agree."

Eisner did not agree that full employment should be sacrificed to the fear of rising inflation. He thought the fears were unfounded. On this, events in recent years have come very powerfully to his support.

Eisner did not agree that social security should be cut. He thought that accounting problems should be solved by accounting methods. He thought, indeed, that social security should be be expanded to provide a decent guaranteed retirement to all working Americans in their golden years.

This battle is not over. But with new proposals in recent days we have seen a step in Bob’s direction. And perhaps today the outlook for saving Social Security from its saviors is a bit brighter than it must have seemed, just a few weeks ago. When I scanned the many letters in this morning’s New York Times on this subject, I was a little surprised that there wasn’t one from Bob, making just this observation.

Eisner did not agree, finally, that deficits are always too large or that the budget should be balanced. On this point, in fact, he did have the backing of most professional economic opinion. And yet it is in this area where we who are his disciples surely have the largest job of teaching still to do.

I took Bob to China a few years ago. The conference was on macroeconomic control, on how to sustain that country’s remarkable high growth rate. But before Bob began on that, he decided to deliver his views on the one-child policy -- a sensitive topic and perhaps the single most repressive feature of Chinese daily life.

Those who were there will not forget it. It was the classic Eisner intervention, passionate conviction combined with close argument. The policy should be abandoned, not merely because it is wrong, but because it is both wrong and unnecessary. Bob’s directness and candor, and the obvious preparation he’d brought to his case, won the complete respect of our hosts -- no easy task on that issue, in that setting.

Bob Eisner is a hard act to follow. He will always remain in our memories and our hearts, and in our literature as one of the great economists of our time. Fearless, unbending, direct, dedicated, and hopeful, he is the economist I admired, the analyst I admired, and the fighter I admired.

A final message, dated September 17, 1998. Bob was back from the treatment center. I wrote him a chatty message, mentioning book events, Ecaar (the organization Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, to which he was devoted), and developments in Russia. I concluded this way, with an emotion that is not my usual style:

"Meanwhile, the real purpose of this message is simply to say that you are very much on my mind, and I hope to talk with you soon. Keep fighting! I love you with all my heart."

The answer came back, vintage Eisner:

"Mary is with us and we are enjoying her visit. And I am hanging in there, eating better and apparently gaining back some weight.

And at the risk of a Starr subpena, I must say that I love you very much."

I feel deeply honored to have gained a place in Bob Eisner’s affections. He will always hold his place in mine.