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Bush economist defends the 1% so you don’t have to

by Systemic Disorder
All the biases, absurd assumptions and turgid ideology that underlies orthodox economics is in plain sight — “Defending the One Percent” is a work of ideology that invents arguments and knocks down straw men that exist only in the imagination.
The mystery of why orthodox economists continue to insist on policies that only aggravate economic crisis ceases to be a mystery once we realize that it is ideology, not science. Orthodox, or “neoclassical,” economics is dominated by Chicago School thinking because its adherents’ motivation is to justify extreme inequality, accounting for the steadfastness of its adherents in the face of massive contrary evidence.

One of the Chicago School’s most significant leaders, Frank Knight, once wrote in an academic economics journal that professors should “inculcate” in their students that these theories are not debatable hypotheses, but rather are “sacred feature[s] of the system.” Yes, we must simply believe. But in case you don’t, mathematical formulae are deployed that purports to describe economic activity — this is a system that stresses individuality but in which human beings are missing. Economic activity is treated as a simple exchange of freely acting, mutually benefitting, equal firms and households in a market that automatically, through an “invisible hand,” self-adjusts and self-regulates to equilibrium.

Among the most widely read defenders of this system is N. Gregory Mankiw, a former chair of the council of economic advisers under former U.S. President George W. Bush. Professor Mankiw, currently the head of the economics department at Harvard University, recently wrote a paper straightforwardly titled, “Defending the One Percent.” Defending them, and the system that enables those at the top of the pyramid to acquire vast sums of wealth, is the job of economics like Professor Mankiw.

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