The Green Star

Full of magic, mystery, and animal spirits once again.

Economics wasn’t always the science it now claims to be. In fact, not so long ago what now is called big E economics was once magical, mysterious and altogether profound. John Maynard Keynes, the architect of America’s recovery from the Great Depression and champion of the welfare state, believed that at its core, economics is ruled by “animal spirits.” That is to say that the free, equal and rational mind of consumers in the Locke/Smith economic paradigm does not sufficiently explain human action in the market place; that economies operate more according to Freudian animal heritage, or esoteric and emotional impulses, than reason. Other thinkers from this formative economic era, like Joseph Schumpeter, sensed that a violent, warlike impulse of “creative destruction” lurked at the heart of capitalism. And Karl Marx, the great dreamer, proposed that economic theory, rather than empowering and rewarding the selfish gene, could instead create a better social realm in which every person gave according to his abilities and received according to his needs [...]

Today, as Gregory Mankiw’s widely used first year university economics textbook, Principles of Economics, shows, the “common weal” discipline has been reduced to a dry, boring, amoral and inhuman study full of pseudo formulas and cumbersome equations with little connection to ethical questions or social desirability. Graph upon graph on page after page of Principles of Economics reveal just how far economics has drifted from the poetry and prose of its roots – that often misread bible of global finance, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations – to the purposely obtuse and elite math of today.

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