Peter Radford — Economic Ignorance?

Peter Radford nails it.

And as Bill Mitchell points out, conventional economists are the math whiz kids that they make themselves out to be either. The models they use are simplifications for "methodological convenience" to  make the complex subject matter more "tractable." Modeling complexity is challenging, and a modern economy involves a lot of complexity.

Then there is ideology.

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Economic Ignorance?

Peter Redford

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This week’s Economist magazine has just such a lecture in its regular Buttonwood column. This one is entitled “Polls Apart”. 

It begins, as many elitist arguments do these days, with a brief mention of the negotiations over Greek debt. Those negotiations have, according to the Economist, ‘provoked claims that democracy is being ignored’. Well, yes they have — by me amongst others. As a general rule I think the democratic urge ought to take precedence over the capitalist. Call me crazy, but that’s just who I am. 

Now comes the elitist riposte: in the next paragraph, and no doubt in severe tones were we able to listen to the authors voice, we are told that the truth is more simple. There are limits to democracy. And those limits are set by the natural workings of the economy. The exact phrasing is this:

“In fact, there have always been limits on voters’ freedom to pursue their desired economic policies”. 

As it happens I agree with this statement. Yes, it is true that voters’ desires get hampered. Yes, it is true that there are limitations on the economic policies voters can pursue.
But here’s the difference: whereas the Economist claims, in its paternalistic elitist voice, that those limits spring somehow from the nature of the economy, I would make a different claim. I would argue that those limits are set by the impositions of the elite itself as it self-satisfies its wants ahead of the rest of us. These are not ‘natural’ limits at all. They are an artifact of class self-interest.

Elitist Confusion