Economists are almost always wrong about economics, despite what they may think

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That ver­bose title is almost the reverse of a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly arro­gant state­ment of eco­nom­ic suprema­cy pub­lished in the UK’s Dai­ly Tele­graph — on the edi­to­r­i­al page of the busi­ness sec­tion — by Andrew Lil­i­co. Enti­tled “Econ­o­mists are near­ly always right about things, despite what you may think in the print edi­tion, its con­tent and tone encap­su­lat­ed every­thing about eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, and econ­o­mists’ blind belief in it, that led me to write Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics over a decade ago.

Fig­ure 1: Lil­i­co’s arti­cle in the print edi­tion of the UK Dai­ly Tele­graph

Graph for Why economists are almost always wrong

The two main fac­tors that made that book nec­es­sary were the capac­i­ty of econ­o­mists to intim­i­date oppo­nents with their appar­ent depth of knowl­edge of a dif­fi­cult sub­ject, and the real­i­ty that econ­o­mists knowl­edge of their own sub­ject was, to coin a phrase, not even shal­low: it was fre­quent­ly out­right wrong.

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About Steve Keen

I am Professor of Economics and Head of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University London, and a long time critic of conventional economic thought. As well as attacking mainstream thought in Debunking Economics, I am also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. The key issue I am tackling here is the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally, and our very low rate of inflation.