A Sick Joke About Economists

There’s a sick joke being spread around social media sites about economists.

The joke is that Economics is a pointless, completely unscientific discipline and that economists are worthless, clueless people with not the faintest idea about how real economies work or about how we can solve our economic problems and achieve greater prosperity.

OK, so it’s not a particularly funny joke. It’s no rib-tickler! But what’s sick about it, exactly?

Well, the sick part is that the people passing this joke around the Internet and many of the people reading the joke don’t seem to realise that it is a joke. It’s passed around as if it is actually true.

And people are so taken in by this nonsense, that they actually seem to believe that people attending university to undertake Economics courses, do nothing worthwhile at all, pick up no useful skills and consequently have nothing useful to contribute to debates about the economy.

And on what do people base this opinion? On Internet tittle-tattle.

The result of these delusions, however, is that when genuinely skilled economists try to explain important ideas for how we can build a better, more prosperous society, a lot of people have no respect for their expertise and blithely assume that they know better.

The worst offenders at spreading and perpetuating these ridiculous myths about Economics are the delusional Facebookers who’ve read a few economics-related articles on the Internet — often from rather partisan sources — and have quickly convinced themselves that they now understand economics so much better than almost anyone else on the planet — and certainly one hell of a lot better than anyone with any actual qualifications in the subject.

These are the sorts of people who will claim that Basic Income is ‘obviously unaffordable’ or that asking rich people to pay even a little bit more in tax will quickly lead to near total economic collapse because all the ‘wealth creators’ will suddenly leave the country.

Sorry, but contrary to what you clearly believe, your rummaging amongst various dubious articles and comments on the Internet does not make you an expert in Economics.

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