Bill Keller:
“There really is a textbook way to fix our current mess. Short-term
stimulus works to help an economy recover from a recession. Some kinds
of stimulus pay off more quickly than others. Once the economic heart is
pumping again, we need to get our deficits under control… So what’s
the problem? Why is our system so fundamentally stuck? Partly it’s a
colossal, bipartisan lack of the political courage required to tell
people what they sort of know but don’t want to hear… But also, I’ve
come to think something is rotten in the state of economics. The dismal
science, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has been ravaged by the same virus
that has corrupted the rest of our national discourse.”
“Economists
don’t live in caves, so there is no reason they should be immune to the
centrifugal politics of this noisy world. Thus serious scholars are
tempted to sign onto ideas that stretch their own credulity, and lesser
economists are thrust forward for their moment of fame as witnesses on
behalf of dubious claims. Economists cluster in ideological think tanks
that promote political conformity rather than intellectual rigor.
Politicians, with no generally accepted consensus to challenge them, can
get away with plucking data out of context to bolster assertions that
are based more on faith than on reality.”
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