Anti-Economics Is Shooting the Messenger
People get mad when logic and research contradict their political convictions
I have a new article in The Boston Globe about the problem with critics of economics from the right and left, namely Jon Stewart and Oren Cass. As always, you can pay for it here or pay for it there. Below, I also share a brief note responding to reactions I have gotten to the article.
When I was in academia, I noticed that often in political science, economics, and philosophy courses, one of the first things students would be taught was the difference between positive and normative statements. Positive statements are factual assertions made about the world, such as what causes poverty. Normative statements deal in the realm of values, what is desirable, and what we want to happen. For example, we can debate whether there is anything morally objectionable about an economy generating high levels of inequality. I used to think that this distinction was so obvious that it was a waste of time to go over these concepts in college classrooms.
Then I started writing for a broader audience. At some point, I realized that people have a great deal of difficulty separating an inquiry into what is true from their beliefs about the way they want the world to be. Few things demonstrate this more clearly than ongoing debates about the role of economics in politics and intellectual discourse.
Recently, comedian Jon Stewart had the Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler on his show. Stewart repeatedly admitted that his knowledge of the discipline was quite limited, but he confidently declared that “the goal of economics in a capitalist system is to make the most amount of money for your shareholders.” As Stewart described it, the field has no concern with “improving the human condition” but focuses on “just making money for the companies that are extracting the fossil fuels from the earth.”
