eureka?

a princeton professor of economics by the name of uwe reinhardt (in no related to acclaimed german director uwe boll) runs a little blog on the new york times called 'economix', which i guess is some kind of jazz-it-up for the proletariat scheme. i've been an off-and-on reader--more off, these days, than on--and in one of my moments of interest i found this article on the trustworthiness of economists. reinhardt's line is that no, economists can't be trusted, and to that effect he cites a mankiw op-ed that champions tax cuts over government spending in a time of recession, in which mankiw chooses as his evidence a study in which it is made explicitly clear that tax cuts are only good stimulus when the economy is healthy. i don't need to belabor the point, i think because we're all familiar with it: economists lie a lot. actually, it's more fair to say that 'celebrity' (and i use the term, which does not connote either real public interest or rock-hard abs, loosely) economists lie a lot. right-wingers, who have enjoyed an overlong vogue, are particularly bad when it comes to dolling up the facts. what is worth noting, and discussing, about reinhardt's point is how self-evident it should be. in what other discipline are pronouncements taken as revelation? nobody goes to a lecture in classics and comes out ready to murder all those who oppose a new roman empire. physicists are far more precise and far less appreciated. there's something to do with money, and the magic of its fast creation, that's helped, as a recent cultural phenomenon, the public presence of economics. i can't stress enough that nobody, but nobody, gave two shits about economics fifty years ago; the discipline has been invisible for most of its history. now that money fetishism is back and better than ever, it seems like anybody who has any connection whatsoever to cash flows, whether it be greenspan or the re-up gang, has become an adept of the true religion.

i am made hopeful, however, by the comments reinhardt received. his readers share his understanding and themselves make excellent points regarding the feasibility of an 'infallible' economic science. does that mean we're making progress? i hope so. it's quite discouraging to think that a whole branch of human knowledge might be stuck in stale formalism for the rest of history.