Are all economists just focused on growth?

Dr Emma Howard of TUDublin, and chair of the Irish Society of Women in Economics (ISWE), has an opinion piece on TheJournal.ie examining the practice of economics and the work of some of her colleagues in Ireland. You can read it here.

Readers may also be interested to note that at the recent AGM of the Irish Economic Association, a motion was unanimously passed to make ISWE a standing committee within the IEA.

One reply on “Are all economists just focused on growth?”

This is an interesting opinion piece, but it uses the “dialogue of the deaf” between President Higgins (plus some of his fellow-travellers) and leading members of the mainstream economics profession as a hook. That was p[robably a mistake.

We’ve been entertained by this spectacle of the duly elected First Citizen, lacking any executive powers, spouting this pseudo-Marxist claptrap beloved of the anti-capitalist, anti-western left, but which has been massaged using academic flourishes to appear to speak to pressing modern concerns, and lambasting those in the economics profession who, in so far as they might exercise any influence, invariably will pander to the interests of those exercising political and economic power – while all the time maintaining a plausible deniability.

It is simply a convenient charade played out periodically to project the optical illusion of a principles-based public debate. The President and his camp-followers know that the claptrap he spouts will never secure the public support to enact the legislation required to implement it, but the camp-followers get a warm, fuzzy, smug, self-righteous feeling when he does. The representatives of the mainstream economics profession also know this and, while they might publicly affect to take umbrage when some of the claptrap is directed at them, they are very relaxed to contribute to the projection of this optical illusion. It deflects public attention from the true extent to which they are pandering to the interests of those who exercise (and often abuse) political and economic power.

The only people who lose out are the ordinary voters at the sharp end of this exercise (and abuse) of political and economic power.

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