"The Trash-Talking Blood Sport of Economics"

The Trash-Talking Blood Sport of Economics

by Richard Eskow/the Smirking Chimp - AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/economy/trash-talking-blood-sport-economics?page=0%2C0

"SNIP.......................


Most people I know would rather have a civil, intellectually-grounded debate. Here's the problem: The economics profession has been injected with enormous sums of money - in the form of chairs, endowments, think tanks, advisory roles, consulting gigs, and God knows what else - to push it further to the right.

And the money's worked. Mike Konczal wrote that his graduate-level macroeconomics course "was by far the most ideologically indoctrinating class I've ever seen," a place where "you learn more sophisticated ways of explaining, say, revealed preferences."

There's a growing perception that right-wing economists are incredibly well-funded, don't fight fair, and are engaged in a war of attrition. That they'll use any gambit necessary to support their case and bog their opponents down in a permanent defensive crouch.

Are they acting out of economic self-interest? There's no way of knowing. I'm sure some are sincere, others are "actors" in the economic sense, and others have simply found themselves hemmed in by events.


........................SNIP"