Economist to bloggers: Shut up, fools

Salon ^ | 28 June 2010 | Andrew Leonard

[Lorianne]

If you don't have a Ph.D. please don't bother us with your "sophomoric musings" ___ Since Ph.D.-flaunting economists can reasonably be assumed to be smart, Karthik Athreya, a specialist in macroeconomics and consumer finance who toils away in the bowels of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, probably knew that he was going to cause a ruckus when he published a broadside declaring the entire blogospheric discussion of economics irrelevant, useless, and dumb.

Athreya's basic argument appears to be that only professional research economists should be allowed to discuss economics because, well, economics is really hard, and nobody else has a chance of understanding it or appreciating all the complexity of the discipline. "When a professional research economist thinks or talks about social insurance, unemployment, taxes, budget deficits, or sovereign debt, among other things, they almost always have a very precisely articulated model that has been vetted repeatedly for internal coherence," he writes. Everybody else, not so much.

[Entrepreneur]

Dismal

[ntmxx]

Nice story and piss poor logic!

I have a Ph.D., so shut up if you don’t agree with me.

[Drango]

The dismal science. On the other hand....

[JayVee]

Economists, along with meteoroligists, among the few professions where you can be wrong half the time and still keep your job.

[spokeshave]

Economics...

The only subject with 400 questions...

...and a thousand answers

[doc1019]

One of the advantages of bloggers ... forces the elite to either put up or shut up.

[UCANSEE2]

among the few professions where you can be wrong half the time and still keep your job.

Obama's been going for 100%. He's still got a job as well.

[Thermalseeker]

....forces the elite to either put up or shut up.

Yep and Phd's like this one don't like it at all.....

[DTogo]

We all know what PhD stands for...

[MichiganConservative]

Macroeconomics is voodoo. The Federal Reserve system is running a massive fraud on the American people. I don’t necessarily respect or trust PhDs.

Putting those three things together in this one doofus, and I’d trust the blogosphere over what he has to say any day.

[Drango]

Speaking of Economics...Salon has never made a profit and now is a penny stock. It’s a liberal rathole where wackadoos throw away money.

[woofie]

I was smart once....does that count?

[Kansas58]

I have a theory:

Defensive people, those who have low self-esteem, often feel that they NEED a Phd behind their name, since they KNOW that they are not very good at explaining things to people.

We have all met some REALLY stupid college professors.

Do not EVER let these people shut you up.

Also, remember Hyak and his admonition that NOBODY is smart enough to “run” a free market economy, you gotta let it run itself! (In so many words)

[tommix2]

The only way the government can ever pay off the federal debt is with inflated dollars. Government economists must
lie about this to fool the people. Government statisticians
must lie about the inflation rate to fool the people. This isn't about who has a PhD in economics, it is about who is telling the truth.

[DTogo]

Defensive people, those who have low self-esteem, often feel that they NEED a Phd behind their name

Sometimes an MBA...

[1rudeboy]

I think this might be the piece that I was thinking of posting: it was level-headed, and a fairly good critique of what is going on around us.

Too late, I suppose . . . Salon is on it, and FReepers are taking the bait, the hook, the line, and the sinker.

[MichiganConservative]

Sometimes an MBA...

The people I have known or known of who have been most educated beyond their intelligence have had MBAs.

[servantoftheservant]

‘Player-Hater Degree’ ?

[1rudeboy]

Oh, what the heck . . . I bookmarked this and will cross-reference it.