Egalitarian Economists
March 19th, 2013 at 10:00 am by David FarrarTyler Cowen writes in the NYT:
ECONOMICS is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.
Specifically:
At least since the 19th century, the interest of economists in personal liberty can be easily documented. In 1829, all 15 economists who held seats in the British Parliament voted to allow Roman Catholics as members. In 1858, the 13 economists in Parliament voted unanimously to extend full civil rights to Jews. (While both measures were approved, they were controversial among many non-economist members.) For many years leading up to the various abolitions of slavery, economists were generally critics of slavery and advocates of people’s natural equality
I see it as partly being a rationalist.
For example, Adam Smith cited birth and fortune, as opposed to intrinsically different capabilities, as the primary reasons for differences in social rank. And the classical economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill promoted equal legal and institutional rights for women long before such views were fashionable.
Equality of opportunity!
More recently, a tradition from University of Chicago economists asserts that deep down, all human beings have the same desires, even though they may face different circumstances and incentives. Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate who is one of the founders of this approach, used the economic method to lay bare the selfish motives behind racial and ethnic discrimination.
Discrimination tends to be a very selfish act.
Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives — common around the globe — that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom.
A nice contrast.
Economics evolved as a more moral and more egalitarian approach to policy than prevailed in its surrounding milieu. Let’s cherish and extend that heritage. The real contributions of economics to human welfare might turn out to be very different from what most people — even most economists — expect.
Cowen is of course one of my favourite economists.
Tags: economists, Tyler Cowen
March 19th, 2013 at 10:15 am
By Max Keiser
The amount of debt worldwide is more than all of the bank accounts in the world, and the current financial situation in Cyprus is the inevitable next phase: Confiscation.
All pretense is now gone that central or global bankers can ‘securitize’ growth by packaging and repackaging debt; by hypothicating and rehypothicating debt; by regulating and rergulating debt. Since the bond market rally began in the early 1980s (yes, it’s that old) each crisis has been met by central and global bankers – the IMF, EU and ECB, to name a few – and their Wall St. and City of London brethren with an increase in debt, and an extension of the debt’s maturity.
The result has been – as of 2007 – the biggest mountain of on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet debt in history: A staggering $220 trillion in debt in America’s $14-trillion economy alone (when you include all public, private and contingent liabilities of unfunded entitlement programs). Deals in the global debt derivatives market now stand in excess of $1 quadrillion, riding above a global GDP of approximately $60 trillion.
Continue reading: http://EndtheLie.com/2013/03/18/the-debt-bomb-just-got-bigger/#ixzz2NvZDWP5h
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 10:39 am
Q: Where are the clients yachts
A: only the bankers have the yachts.
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March 19th, 2013 at 11:54 am
Economists… if you put them end to end they wouldn’t reach a conclusion. They’re good at analysing at what is and what has been, but don’t put total faith in them when it comes to looking into the future.
Karl Marx was an economist, too, wasn’t he? And Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s Minister of Economics – though he came right and became a fringer member of the resistance to Hitler. I suppose even Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, the engineer who founded Social Credit considered himself an economist.
Let’s not take them too seriously. There’s a bit of a mental jump in assuming rational behaviour as the basis for economic decisions. Ask a successful advertising guru how rational purchase decisions are.
To the Ancient Romans, augury and haruspicy were as serious and weighty as economics is to us now.
Here’s some balance, cribbed from the Web:
A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.
The interviewer asks the mathematician, “What do two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “Four.” The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says “Yes, four, exactly.”
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The accountant says “On average, four – give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”
Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says “What do you want it to equal?”
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 11:55 am
Egaliterian? – perhaps but reinforces Condliffe’s opinion that economics is only commonsense made difficult.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 11:57 am
Note to Cowen: there are numerous kinds of equality, some of which conflict.
Vote:March 19th, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Egalitarianism is something I support. My definition of that is we are all equal. I do not consider an apple picker to be more or less of a person than a surgeon, for example. Equall but different. This does not imply an imbalance which much be addressed, which is how egalitarianism has been distorted by the left.
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