ECONOMIC MYTHS

From CounterPunch:

What’s So Great About Efficiency?

The claim that Professor Mankiw makes (see his New York Times editorial responding to the student protest), but that is endemic to Western economics in general, is that his economics is a methodology rather than an ideology. But a methodology is a means of accomplishing a goal. Whose goals are accomplished with the methodology of his economics? Why would a generic methodology be better at accomplishing specific goals than specific methods? And most pressing to readers, why does a purported non-ideological methodology always come to such ideologically loaded conclusions—why are there winners and losers if in theory everyone benefits? And why are the winners always the already rich and powerful and the losers always the already marginalized?

And

The goal of economics always given by Western economists is to maximize economic efficiency. Who could object to getting the most out of society’s economic efforts? If free trade agreements drive a few million peasants from their land through the destruction of their indigenous economies, don’t a few capitalists getting rich from hiring the newly “freed” labor that results mean that efficiency has been served? Lest one think this tale improbable, take a look at Mexico following implementation of NAFTA. If capital is globally mobile while labor is embedded within national boundaries, linguistic and cultural difference and the accoutrement of complex social life, how do economic models that assume that none of this embedding has economic content maximize anything?

More here.

Yeah, just what the hell is "economic efficiency," anyway?

Years ago, when I was a senior in high school attending what was ostensibly a public speaking seminar hosted by the Rotarians, but was actually a far right-wing neoliberal indoctrination camp, an economist told me that economics is not concerned with morality or altruism; rather, he went on, economics is about finding the most efficient allocation of goods and resources. Well, okay. Who can be against "efficiency"?

It wasn't until I was approaching my thirtieth birthday that I learned to start asking the question "efficient for whom?" That's the trillion dollar question. And the answer to that question, if you're an economist, is "efficient for the capitalist class" because that's who they serve. So, necessarily, the concerns of the entire field of economics reflects the relatively small group of people who can afford to pay them.

I mean, can you afford to have an economist working for you? Has it ever even occurred to you to hire an economist? No, of course not. Economists don't work for labor; they work for capital, and it is capital with which they concern themselves. Yeah yeah, I'm aware that many economists work for universities, but they get paid way more than, say, English teachers because economists routinely move back and forth between academia and the business world, and can command much higher salaries in the Ivory Tower because they are so in demand in the corporate sector. Bottom line: economists almost always are working for business, helping business, justifying business, intellectualizing business, always about business and what's good for business, but never working for you and people like you.

This is justified, very poorly, with the worn out assertion that what's good for business is good for the nation at large: numerous events over the last five years or so, however, have proven far beyond a doubt that business can do just fine, excel even, when everyone else is going to hell. Indeed, half of America is now in poverty or very near poverty, while corporations continue to post record profits.

As usual, I'm not saying that the field of economics is without value. Far from it. But economics is not a science. It does not deal entirely with facts. It definitely serves a propaganda function benefiting the wealthy plutocrats who own and operate the United States. It is concerned with the economic "efficiency" of business and only business.

But when half the nation is in dire economic straits, I'd say economists need to look at other kinds of economic "efficiencies." You know, like how the fuck are people going to pay their fucking bills.

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