The Trouble With Economics

That true conservative, Martin Kelly, writes:

An academic named Guy Dammann has an article in today's 'Guardian' entitled 'The trouble with economics'.

Like all critiques of economics, it fails to mention the blindingly obvious; that economics is not a science, but a religion. Like all religions, it states that its prescriptions are the path to wellbeing and fulfillment. The recent extension of economic theory into such mystical, unscientific areas as 'happiness' more than prove the point.

The energy and complexity of arguments between economists more than echo medieval disputations concerning how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; and if we concede Marx's point that religion is the opium of the people, then, by the same token, for the past 200 years economics has been the opium of the elite, and of those who wish to join it.

One has many atheist friends in the blogosphere, and is always slightly saddened by their use of expressions such as 'sky fairy' to describe the object of sincerely held beliefs. When advised of a plan to create a Napoleonic state religion, Talleyrand remarked, 'In order to found His religion, Jesus Christ died and rose again. I would suggest you do likewise'. The sacrifice of the Cross and the mystery of the Resurrection are what separates Christianity from all other world religions. There is no Cross in economics; it makes crosses for others to bear.

The truly pernicious achievement of economics has been that folks who think nothing of rejecting God as an unsupportable abstract have no difficulty in paying homage to equally unsupportable abstracts such as 'equilibrium'. Much of their opposition to religion, which is of evangelical proportions, seems to be rooted in historic abuses of power perpetrated by Church authorities. It might put them off their dinners if they were to realise that many economists have been as deeply in the tank for their banking employers as the medieval Church was in the tank for the Medicis.

But I suppose those economists were just being rational.