Post #1970946

2026-04-07 15:32 UTC

Bill Phillips ("Phillips Curve") used flowing water to model the economy in in 1949. > according to his friend economist Richard Lipsey, "all the staff came out to humiliate this upstart idiot." Phillips showed how water flowed from the Treasury tank to chambers representing health and education (as the government spent money) and then got pumped back to the Treasury more or less rapidly as you pulled a lever to tweak the taxation rate. "It turned out after ten minutes that he knew more than everybody there, and they shut up," says Lipsey. They offered him a job at LSE. https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/04/07/g-s1-116575/how-bill-phillips-used-flowing-water-to-model-the-economy #economics #modeling #simulation #macroeconomics

Replies (2)

@the_roamer@mastodonapp.uk 2026-05-04 18:51

@maxpool@mathstodon.xyz As a young UK lecturer in the 1990s, I was actively involved in the European student exchange programmes and on one of my visits to the Netherleands we were shown an actual hardware implementation of the Phillips Machine. I can't remember which institution we visited, though I think it probably was the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Their version of the machine was built in 1951. #PhillipsMachine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine

Open ##1970945
@tokensane@mastodon.me.uk 2026-04-29 17:53

@maxpool The machine is now in the Science Museum in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine They've got a computer simulation next to it, so you can have a play with the controls. Gives a new meaning to the phrase "cash flow". It was also parodied by #TerryPratchett in "Making Money" with the "Glooper", which simulated the economy of Ankh-Morpork.

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