Absolutely fantastic article.

As someone who studied Economics and worked for a central bank, the claims be thrown at economists are ridiculous.

If one disagrees with an economist then economists are evil and believe in making the rich wealthier. If an economist is on your side then the other side are morons for not listening to the experts!

We are taught quite clearly the assumptions that go into the models and to achieve top marks then you need to challenge these assumptions and analyze their reflection of reality.

I find many attack the idea of economists from what they’ve read on twitter from people who haven’t read the economist’s work in any depth.

Take Milton Friedman for example. In “Capitalism and Freedom”, he proposes a negative income tax for people earning less than a certain amount. This could have quite a powerful effect on poverty yet it does not fit into the straw man version of Friedman.

There are many economists with different theories and thousands upon thousands of papers. We can’t blame economists for political leaders picking and choosing which ones to listen to for confirmation bias.

Both Karl Marx and Adam Smith were economists but had very different ideas.

I hope this didn’t come off as a rant and if anyone wants to challenge anything I present here, I’m happy to debate!