#THE SYNDICATE PROJECT HALO REACH FREE#

Little can be done about inequalities in wealth, beyond mitigating inequalities in incomes, without threatening the the health of the entire economic order. I agree that the first degree in economics should include more economic history and history of ideas, and more political philosophy and ethics. Both assertions are falsified by post WWII USA history, if transfer payments are seen as largely made up of delayed and contingent wages. If Piketty were right, the share of labour would decline over time, and household net worth would grow faster than household income. Piketty's book does not understand the Solow-Swan model of the elementary dynamics of a industrial economies, as taught to university students everywhere.

That is not enough time in which to obtain a broad and serious education. A major problem in New Zealand universities, where I have taught for 20 years, is that only 4 years of post high school instruction is offered. This is doubly true given how poorly prepared many average uni students are nowadays. It is impossible to learn business and policy reality, and standard and heterodox economics, within the ambit of the English/Commonwealth 3 year degree. If the nationalists and populists come to power, they will have no more time for Skidelsky than they do for the rest of profession. In a dynamic, developing subject, this will always be the case but dismissing the mainstream as narrow and ideologically driven is wide of the mark and undermines the case for any reform that might legitimately be required. There are undoubtedly developments in the economics discipline which could be better reflected in the undergraduate curriculum. Is there a consensus amongst UK macroeconomists on austerity? Certainly not, but it is not the discipline's fault whom policy makers choose to ask for economic advice and which advice they choose to follow. As for blaming economics as a discipline for both the crash and austerity, Lord Skidelsky fails to acknowledge the many economists who argued and continue to argue against the offending policies.

Would a discipline in the thrall of the oligarchs have produced the New a economics of the Minimum Wage, current advances in behavioural economics or any of the huge literature on, say, involuntary unemployment where government intervention leads to a better equilibrium? Lord Skidelsky mentions capital in the 21st Century but neglects to remind us that Piketty has been feted within the economics profession, published in the leading mainstream journals and tipped as a future Nobel prize winner. In the academic literature this is the most dynamic and interesting current research agenda while most practising, non-academic, economists are engaged in precisely this kind of endeavour.

#THE SYNDICATE PROJECT HALO REACH FREE#

The idea that mainstream economics is a free market ideology ignores the vast swathes of the discipline that investigate what happens when markets fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes. Like most such critiques it breaks down at step (1). There are three steps: (1) economists all believe X (2) X is clearly nonsense (3) therefore economics is nonsense and needs to be reformed.

This article follows a common pattern found in critiques of 'mainstream' or 'orthodox' economics.

The syndicate project halo reach