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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This is 75% of what’s wrong with economic policy. People pick sides and arrange data to support the conclusion they desire. Neoliberal economics has huge downsides we’ve known about forever. But we don’t talk about them until now, when they’re at crisis levels. The economists are creatures of the institutions and schools, which are funded by people and corporations very much opposed to criticism of neoliberal policies under which they profit enormously. The result is herd thinking in the academies, and an exiling of all critics.

(I’ll put aside how this creates bubbles.)

The vexing issue of the moment - our need for increasingly less labor - is still not honestly addressed. It’s either brushed off with the argument, “New tech always creates even more jobs down the road” (never offering that this road is fifty years long), or addressed with candor: “well, it’s going to ugly for a lot of people... but there is no other option.”

I happen to agree with the latter. But it is a defeatist position. And on the bigger issues, like this, our economists might as well be parking lot attendants. All they will offer is some safe, useless bit of dogma that’ll satisfy the corporate interests that ultimately pay their salaries.

Economists generally might as well be parking-lot attendants, because most politicians generally are not interested in the right answer, but in finding a public reason to do what they wanted to do anyway.