Tuesday 17 August 2010

Aren't Economists "Brilliant"?

Or so they are invariably described.

The way to restore prosperity is to put more people out of work? I ask you! Yet this is almost (if almost) the only school of economics taught to almost (if almost) any undergraduates, permitted to be published in almost (if almost) any peer-reviewed journals, and so on. Their main sources of income are in or around Wall Street and the City; the self-justifying academia is a sideline.

But never question them. I mean it. You just dare. I do, but then I was born past caring. Most people weren't.

7 comments:

  1. Please point to a single article in a peer-reviewed economics journal that argues this.

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  2. You have me bang to rights. No such article (so far as I am aware - I am open to correction) is entitled "Economists Are Brilliant". I hang my head in shame.

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  3. No mistaking the Fast Show generation.

    It may be a sideline, but it is a sideline for which they happily bill the tax payer. But then that's Wall Street and the City all over.

    Have you ever considered setting up a peer-reviewed journal?

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  4. Yes, but not directly of this...

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  5. Very much the point of this post, it all depends on who the peers are.

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  6. Precisely so.

    As we all feel the bullets, our anger will be directed at those who fired the shots. But we shouldn't forget those who loaded the guns.

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  7. But Mr. Lindsay, didn't you know, it's science! Just like physics or chemistry! Except, the only "laboratory" to test economic theory is history, and economics departments have been eliminating economic history from their course offerings for decades now.

    All we are left with now are abstract models, many of which are useless and some of which are worse than useless, they are actually pernicious.

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