Sunday, December 25, 2016

Timothy Taylor — Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor

Economists might also wince just a bit at the reaction of some economists to poverty, who Dickens calls "the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school." Dickens writes: "I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity ..."
Group insanity or Scrooges?

Conversable Economist
Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

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