ABSTRACT
It is argued in this paper that the generational time paths produced by economic models offer opportunities for the display of technical virtuosity, but shed no more light on the problem than did earlier neoclassical models on the problem of distribution within the community. In both these instances, economists unerringly select assumptions for their models that produce conclusions which, when they are not merely taxonomic, accord with the broadly accepted values of society. Although these new models are not quite so obvious as the earlier static neoclassical ones, cursory attention to their procedure reveals that the economist has really nothing of substance to contribute to the debate on the ‘ideal’ intergenerational time path. In effect, the models are ‘cooked up’ so as to give the imprimatur of science to what is, after all, no more than a popular ethical judgment.
