And what exactly are economists supposed to do about all this?
If your point is really true - and I'm not completely convinced - then the ethical thing to do would be to make a public stand.
Richard Dawkins and others seem happy to launch crusades against religion, ID and parapsychology. And there's a small but significant trend in science to popularise abstruse subjects like string theory and cosmology. So public campaigning in science isn't alien to the mainstream.
Is it too much to ask that economists speak up and say 'No, this is wrong' when the ideas are misused in the media?
Otherwise, how can you explain why the Economist, the WSJ, FT and the Fed all seem to have a strong ideological unanimity? If there's a groundswell of dissent among mainstream academic economists, shouldn't we be hearing more about it?
As for business-friendly monetary policy, all I can say is that one of the principals of this very blog thinks Paul Volcker is a genius, so maybe you ought to start there.
Sure, modern economics is dominated by people who believe in inflation targets and think that 6% unemployment is "full employment." And those who disagree do speak out, although its' mighty difficult for those views to get an airing from the likes of the FT or the Economist.
If a hundred academic economists got together and put out a press release saying that current thinking is wrong, wouldn't that be covered as news, and wouldn't it start a public debate?
It's paradoxical to suggest that they don't seem to mind what's published in the media, because it suggests they place a very low value on their own expertise. You'd think they'd at least make an effort to get some books published and put some time into promoting them.
It's either that, or they don't see much wrong with what's being said on their behalf, and the mainstream really doesn't disagree much at all.
I mean, most people in the U.S., anyway, think that government can't do a damn thing right, a view which is often reflected in the media. Yet I don't hear all the economist-bashers here berating the political science profession for not getting out there and correcting the impression.
Look, econ is no better or no worse than any other intellectual discipline. It just gets more heat because there are more of them in policy-making positions.
If you don't like what you see in FT or the Economist, start writing letters to the editor demanding a wider range of views. Bone up on which economists and publications are offering progressive-friendly views on economics.
Want a start:
I'm not sure how this is relevant. This isn't about public status, it's about public policy.
Econ is much worse than any other discipline because its apparent inability to promote any point of view other than neo-liberal orthodoxy is the single biggest threat to peaceful existence on this planet. In the West, no other discipline has as much influence on national and corporate policy.
If the party line isn't changed, a lot of people are going to die. Not a few are dying already, and for the rest of us the effects are going to start being felt 5-10 years from now, and from there - barring divine intervention or some kind of technological deus ex machina - the outlook gets less and less optimistic.
So while I agree that we can all do something as outsiders, is it asking too much of progressive economists that they try harder to raise their own public profile?
It's good to have a useful list like the one you've posted, but I think for most people this information is so far out of the mainstream of debate that it's almost invisible. As an outsider, how can promote something you've never heard of?
The right-wing started from ideology and made a conscious push to popularise it by capitalising deliberately on those who felt marginalised and discontented. What it didn't do was produce useful ideas and wait for the discontented to find out about them.
You have government-run worker programs, for example, as an accepted means to fight recession because of liberal economists. One of the most famous economists -- maybe the most famous -- in America is a liberal economist: Paul Krugman. Most Nobel Laureates endorsed John Kerry.
It's all well and good to bash the entire field, but you're falling into the same trap that DeAnander fell into with Steve Keen's Debunking Economics -- taking the neoliberal economists and propping them up as being somehow the "true" economists, when, in fact, they make up a fairly small minority in macroeconomics. Even Ed Prescott, who won the Nobel in (I think) 2004 and is one of the kings of Neoclassicalist economics, had to admit that the liberal Keynesian order had not been overthrown.
I think you're writing the conclusion before the thesis. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
While the number wasn't one hundred, they have done this, and it was covered, albeit very briefly. Kerry had the endorsement of something along the lines of twenty-five Nobel Laureates, who all signed a letter claiming that Bush's economic policies were endangering the country's future. The story made it all the way to the nightly news.
It's paradoxical to suggest that they don't seem to mind what's published in the media, because it suggests they place a very low value on their own expertise. You'd think they'd at least make an effort to get some books published and put some time into promoting them. It's either that, or they don't see much wrong with what's being said on their behalf, and the mainstream really doesn't disagree much at all.
As I said above, the best economists, with the exception of Krugman, are off doing research and aren't going to waste time with a bunch of media appearances. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
As I said above, the best economists, with the exception of Krugman, are off doing research and aren't going to waste time with a bunch of media appearances.
I wouldn't call Volcker a genius, but I would call him one of the better Fed chairman we've had. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I doubt anyone at the Fed gives a shit about the EU, outside of perhaps ECB policy.
This is unanimity? I don't think so. It's fairly easy to separate the crank-theory peddlers among these four. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
