Little by little, people are starting to lose their respect for, or admiration of, economists. Perhaps many people thought economics was a science in which certain gentlemen, above party politics, were able to predict, forecast or make decisions based on their calculations: calculations that would work like a science, where if I do “A” I will get the result “C – B”, and therefore reach “D” in time “E”.
But the truth is that economists are conditioned by political bias: their particular view of the world depends on their political beliefs.
Cullen Roche explained on the website Pragmatic Capitalism how your economic outlook would change if your economics professor had been Keynes. Each “school” of economics has a very specific ideology, and the political lines are clearly drawn. That is why economists rarely learn the laws of economics.
Economics is closer to religion than to a science. In fact, among our 10 humorous quotes about economics and economists there was one that hit the nail on the head about what economics is: “the only field where two people can win a prize for saying two completely opposite things.” Unfortunately, that is economics.
If economics were like a science, it would have to start from sterilised facts, beginning purely with how the system works at an operational level, instead of looking at how a particular political group can use certain policies to fit a particular view of the world.
Why are economists unable to predict a crisis or prescribe the right remedies to get out of one?
See also: The risk of executing the right strategy in the wrong context
Because they are not working from sterilised facts but from a political position, where the remedies needed to get out of the crisis may clash with their political ideology.
It is as if a doctor had a religious bias and refused a patient a blood transfusion because it went against his religious beliefs, even though the transfusion was the only way to save the patient’s life.
For example, it was not economics that advised against letting some Spanish banks fail. It was politics: remember that the United States let Lehman Brothers fail, and the US has experienced a model of steady growth with economic policies completely opposite to Europe’s.
How can you tell whether you are dealing with a good economist or a fraud?
Using the scientific method. It’s simple.
- A. If, when you talk to an economist, you can’t tell whether they vote for the left or the right, you have a good economist in front of you.
- B. If, when you talk to an economist, you can guess which political party they vote for, you are dealing with a fraud.
- C. If an economist suggests that a Spanish prime minister has improved or ruined the world economy, you are dealing with an idiot.
I would even venture to say that in those television debates, economists rarely appear, even if they are introduced as such. They are more like political pundits who give their political opinions disguised as economic realities. On the other side of the screen sits the viewer, who will agree more with the speech of one particular “political pundit”, also known as an economist, not on the basis of their own economic knowledge but of their own political bias.
A universal truth:
“Don’t be so foolish as to argue about religion and politics. It is enough to know that the other person’s beliefs, and probably our own, are unfounded and anything but objective.”
Further reading
Featured image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
