Economy

“The crisis has given so many denials of what appear to be strictly scientific estimates advanced by economists that it is no wonder that a few laymen believed themselves authorized to proclaim the bankruptcy of political economy… Mitigating these slanderous voices would do no harm: many economists have committed the sin of immodesty.” These are the words of the political scientist Robert Michels, author of the first book titled Economics and Happiness.1 He wrote this in 1933, but it seems to have been written today. “Immodesty”, or arrogance, is not the sole prerogative of economic science, since it is a well-known universal anthropological trait. At certain times, however, the economic community is affected by a particularly stubborn and widespread form of immodesty. Faced with obvious deficiencies and errors in their discipline, instead of giving in to the force of facts and questioning their own views, humbly revising old certainties and dogmas, they stubbornly turn to criticize those who criticize them. This is one of those times, and there is an increasingly strong need for a major overhaul of many dogmas and axioms of economic theory and practice.