Key ideas from Jamee Moudud

• Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations mentions the 'invisible hand' only once in 800 pages, contrary to popular belief about its centrality to his theory
• Post-war economics became dominated by mathematicians and engineers who modeled the economy as a machine, according to Machine Dreams
• A 1985-86 National Science Foundation study concluded that top economics graduate programs were training 'idiot savants' who couldn't apply theory to reality
• European post-war reconstruction involved extensive industrial policy through nationalized banks and democratic planning, not laissez-faire markets
• The American Economic Association was originally founded by institutionalists trained in the German historical school, not neoclassical theorists
• Market failures like pollution are ubiquitous features of production, not exceptions requiring government intervention
• Progressive taxation rates were much higher during capitalism's 'golden age' in the 1950s-60s without destroying the economy
• Constitutional differences explain why European welfare states became more robust than America's first-generation constitution without explicit economic rights