Two Jewish guys, born three years apart, enjoy near identical upbringings. It is as if they were identical twins separated at birth—both brought up without much wealth; both exceptionally bright lads, who sat in the same economics class at the University of Chicago. Both witnessed at first hand the horrors of the Great Depression and watched side by side as Franklin Roosevelt struggled to put millions of Americans back to work. Both eventually found great success, wealth, and world fame as economists, and both were awarded Nobel Prizes.
Yet Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman were polar opposites. Early on in his life, Samuelson turned left, wholeheartedly embraced the new economics of Keynesianism, and made himself a multi-millionaire by writing a textbook simply called Economics that became the bible for all but a small handful of economists in denial.
