Now in a recent piece Skildelsky states:
What unites the great
economists, and many other good ones, is a broad education and outlook.
This gives them access to many different ways of understanding the
economy. The giants of earlier generations knew a lot of things besides
economics. Keynes graduated in mathematics, but was steeped in the
classics (and studied economics for less than a year before starting to
teach it). Schumpeter got his PhD in law; Hayek’s were in law and
political science, and he also studied philosophy, psychology, and brain
anatomy. Today’s professional
economists, by contrast, have studied almost nothing but economics. They
don’t even read the classics of their own discipline. Economic history
comes, if at all, from data sets. Philosophy, which could teach them
about the limits of the economic method, is a closed book. Mathematics,
demanding and seductive, has monopolized their mental horizons. The
economists are the idiots savants of our time.
Indeed, if Economists were first engineers, physicians, plumbers, carpenters, or some professions based in reality then perhaps so too would be there prognostications. Remember the employment rate curves sent out eight years ago by the Administrations incoming Economists. Never worked so what did they do? Changed the rules. Eliminated tens of millions from those looking for jobs. If your theory does not work, change the data.
Try that one on a bridge. Gravity is not as kind!
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