Some web links related to economics and economists.
The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a society so prosperous that people would hardly have to work. But that isn't exactly how things have played out.
According to Friedman, "Between 1947 and 1973 the average hourly
wage for nonsupervisory workers in private industries other than
agriculture (restated in 2013 dollars) nearly doubled, from $12.27
to $21.23--an average growth rate of 2.1 percent per annum. But by
2013 the average hourly wage was only $20.13--a 5 percent fall from
the 1973 level." For most people, then, the magic of increasing
productivity stopped working around 1973, and they had to keep
working just as much in order to maintain their standard of living.
...
This explanation leaves an important question: If the very
rich--the workers who have reaped above-average gains from the
increased productivity since Keynes's time--can afford to work
less, why don't they? I asked Friedman about this and he theorized
that for many top earners, work is a labor of love. They are doing
work they care about and are interested in, and doing more of it
isn't such a burden--it may even be a pleasure. They derive meaning
from their jobs, and it is an important part of how they think of
themselves. And, of course, they are compensated for it at a level
that makes it worth their while.
The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS)
Wealth inequalities too frequently result from injustice. And they too frequently lead to more injustice. That's because they allow those with wealth to influence the political process. Strategies all the way from lobbying to outright bribery enable the wealthy to safeguard existing privileges and to obtain even more special favors from politicians. As long as such favors are available, inequality will be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating.
The real problem of inequality isn't the existence of numerical differences in wealth or gains and losses in the sizes of the pieces of a supposedly fixed pie. In the real world, the problems that rightly make ordinary people -- including both Occupy protesters and Tea Partiers -- angry are rooted in theft, privilege, and political cronyism.
Yet whereas their peers in the natural sciences can edit genes and spot new planets, economists cannot reliably predict, let alone prevent, recessions or other economic events. Indeed, some claim that economics is based not so much on empirical observation and rational analysis as on ideology.
Victoria Bateman
So here is my own five-point plan for how we economists can bring about a revitalized, more relevant, profession.
Economics has cut itself off through the imperialist tendency to see itself as the king of social sciences.
In the 1980s, 36 percent of global GDP and 43 percent of global GDP growth was accounted for by emerging and developing economies. In the last five years, these numbers have increased to 56 percent and 79 percent respectively.
It is only by incorporating gender that economists can reach a fuller understanding of the causes of poverty, slow growth and inequality.
it would also be helpful if students were properly introduced to the wealth of data available these days, and to the basics of both how to "clean it up" and how to think about causality in the context of real world scenarios.
Whilst some economists see the departures from the rational behavior assumed by their models as nothing more than trifling, others of us believe that it is only by accepting that humans are human that we can explain the real fundamentals of economics: the causes of boom and bust, the drivers of entrepreneurship and growth, and how people can become locked into poverty.