Economists get called a lot of things. Indecisive, free market fetishists, narrow -minded, stale+pale+male, wannabe scientists with a fake Nobel Prize. In an age where it can feel like 250 years of Industrial Revolution have given us staggering inequality, a dying planet and a glass ceiling on any country who plays by the rules catching up with their former colonisers, it’s no surprise that the subject that (supposedly) led us this way is getting it in the neck.
These all come from real and serious problems the field has faced (and still faces to this day, although I’ll hopefully write more about what’s being done there). But I still worry there’s a risk of being too harsh on anything that looks a little bit like Econ Brain. Most of the economists I’ve met, read and interviewed just want to help shed light on solving real problems for real folks, often basing their entire research on the fact that free markets aren’t the be-all and end-all.
Noah Smith once wrote about how Econ 101ism has infected the popular discussion, making it easy to assume that there are strict Laws of Supply and Demand — ones which say Markets Rule and everything else just gums them up. It’s a weird irony that the people who argue “because basic economics says so” about things like immigration, mimimum wages and inequality can be the furthest from what economists are actually discovering. But what does that mean for the people who know there’s more to life than the simplest possible assumptions, and think economists don’t care for their experiences?
So that’s what you’ll get here — my takes on what people see as the failures of economics, economists and the people they’re meant to be advising. Some will be much more topical than others, but hopefully it’ll shed a light on how economics can be, at the end of the day, another useful tool for understanding whatever issues you care about.