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There
once was a pitched battle of words raging at slate.com that is as effusive a
case of kettle-calling-the-pot-black as I’ve ever seen. Rock star
economist Paul Krugman and comparatively anonymous Professor James K.
Galbraith were arguing over who is the “real” economist. This was
back in 1998.
I don’t have
anything against academically trained economists. I really don’t. The
pure causal supply-and- demand-theory economists from the intellectual
literary side and their natural enemies, the economists of the quantitative
mathematical analytical school are both equally viable in their competition
to complicate the simplest of so-called sciences. Much like statistics, you
can select the outcome you want and then generate the logic to achieve it.
Such is the case
with our current situation. Thanks to economists, we have Asset Backed
Commercial Paper, Credit Default Swaps, (it’s economists who rated
these Triple “A”), not to mention Off Balance Sheet Transactions,
deficit spending, and fiat currency.
It is economists who
perpetuate the myth of globalization, which is merely the age old pursuit of
free trade with a modernized handle.
It is economists who
dominate media interpretation of what has happened, what is happening, and
what will happen. The general public notes that their track record is
virtually perfect in its failure on all fronts. The government, however,
selects the theoretical style it requires to justify its special
interest-oriented economic policy, and, regurgitated ad infinitum in speeches
and “position statements”, force-feeds it to the citizenry of
this apparently newly globalized globe. Then, they hire these same economists
to oversee the national bank account and lending window.
Now I lack the Ph.
D., or any of the other post-secondary credentials that might make me a
“respected economic theorist”, but my two eyes and both ears are
fully functional. Those are the only attributes necessary for the practice of
economics, as opposed to the theory of economics.
Presently, my own
personal economy is in recession, and all of us in this isolated little
country warren – the dog, the cat, and myself – are suffering the
effects of a significant drop in our collective GDP. Especially since, what
we have here, is a welfare state, where only one third of the population is
employed, and the other two laze around all day torturing mice and birds (the
cat) or deer and squirrels (the dog).
Since the principle
product of our economy is dead wildlife and words, only one of those products
is currently finding much in the way of demand, and that substantially
reduced relative to a year ago.
I attribute the
sharp drop in demand to the sudden contraction of credit and capital in the
external globalized economy, combined with an excess of supply. Especially
from the academic economist crowd, who seem to have emerged from the
financial catastrophe in a festive deluge of postulating and theorizing.
In my admittedly
limited exposure to academic theory (I’ve limited my research to
Friedman, Keynes, Mises, Hobbes, Smith, Mill, Ricardo, and Winnie the Pooh),
the most memorable theory to explain the past hundred years or so comes from
a poster my Uncle used to have on his wall in his bathroom over the scale.
It was a picture of
a pile of hippopotami piled onto a little boat, and one after another,
additional chubby cartoon hippopotami were gleefully somersaulting and
cart-wheeling off the dock and onto the increasingly overloaded boat. The
caption on the poster said “More is not always better”.
It took me the
better part of 10 years to read all the books and all the theories of these
great economic thinkers, and it took a flash of a second to read that poster
at my Uncle’s house. I have reached the conclusion that the author of
that poster is probably the greatest economic thinker I’ve encountered
in my admittedly intellectually miniscule world.
So we’ve
decided to institute that complex theoretical economic stratagem into our
local economy. We’re travelling more without the expense of fossil
fuels, and easing the high fat and sugar diet into a vegetable and grains and
fish-dominant one (much cheaper). This has resulted in an immediate dividend
of reduced expenses and improved overall physical infrastructure health, and
surplus energy.
Calculations
recently undertaken have revealed that it is actually cheaper to rent than to
own a house, both in terms of psychological impact and baseline GDP
requirement to service the associated debt of ownership, a situation which
has gone from a significant amount stretching into decades, to a non-existent
state, but for some relatively minor outstanding personal amount. According
to these highly scientific quantitative analyses, you don’t actually
own your house anyways. As long as it is encumbered with debt, the bank owns
it.
Arguing about who is
a real economist is akin to vying for official recognition as World’s
Biggest Public Asshole. Who cares? Who needed economists in the first place?
The archaic
definition of an “economist” is one who lives “economically”.
Economy of motion, economy of lifestyle…and economy of words. Nuff said.
James West
www.midasletter.com
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