But Not at GMU!
14 December 2008
News Editor, WTOP Radio
Washington, DC
Dear Sir or Madam:
Your reporter today asked a University of Maryland economist why so many Americans oppose bailing out the Detroit automakers. The professor answered that economics (and, presumably, the economics allegedly justifying the bailout) is a "tough subject"; that many people find it "boring"; and that it is "very difficult to explain to non-economists." I disagree, both with his presumption that only persons ignorant of economics oppose the bailout, and that basic economics is inherently beyond the grasp of people of ordinary intelligence. Economics is beyond the grasp of most people in large part only because too many of my fellow economists make it so. H.L. Mencken agreed:
"Its [economics's] dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity – in brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors."*
Sad but true.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* H.L. Mencken, "The Dismal Science," reprinted in Mencken, ed., Prejudices (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 [1947]), p. 149.
News Editor, WTOP Radio
Washington, DC
Dear Sir or Madam:
Your reporter today asked a University of Maryland economist why so many Americans oppose bailing out the Detroit automakers. The professor answered that economics (and, presumably, the economics allegedly justifying the bailout) is a "tough subject"; that many people find it "boring"; and that it is "very difficult to explain to non-economists." I disagree, both with his presumption that only persons ignorant of economics oppose the bailout, and that basic economics is inherently beyond the grasp of people of ordinary intelligence. Economics is beyond the grasp of most people in large part only because too many of my fellow economists make it so. H.L. Mencken agreed:
"Its [economics's] dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity – in brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors."*
Sad but true.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* H.L. Mencken, "The Dismal Science," reprinted in Mencken, ed., Prejudices (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 [1947]), p. 149.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Thursday May 14, 2009 at 10:21am