>Your post contains two unfair criticisms. The article was making a cheap shot at economists. Clearly economists don't claim to be experts at predicting "demand

>Your post contains two unfair criticisms. The article was making a cheap shot at economists. Clearly economists don't claim to be experts at predicting "demand" in every possible markets, only at understanding the general principles. Let's just say that I wasn't at all surprised that it was that one economist in particular - Piketty - who got stuck in the small room. Economists are a cliquey bunch at the best of times and the cool kids do not like Piketty. >Your own criticism is unfair because you think finding any link, no matter tenuous, between a source of funding and some kind of bias, is sufficient to show Economists (but not their critics) are biased. So you think economists are correct that everybody responds to incentives.... but economists don't? >First, academic departments are not funded solely by corporate debt. You mean student debt. No, they are not solely, but it is a huge proportion of university funding. Students take out loans. Every university has a keen interest in the terms and availability of those loans because it affects how much their primary customers can pay. This is what led to 20% year on year inflation in college prices. > Second, it's unfair to call it "student debt" since students are getting something of value facepalm > Finally, student debt is a very minor issue in the scheme of things You are really out of touch. There's over a trillion dollars of student debt outstanding in the US alone. >Finally, how helpful is it to apply your lens of "rational incentives" to your own side of politics I think it makes sense to look at incentives from every side. >There is no incentive to support mainstream economics outside of academia, because economics is subtle, gives no easy answers, and often identifies no bad guys. As mentioned above, it gives convenient policy proscriptions, therefore it is useful. The presence or lack of 'enemies' is irrelevant. >It gives clear policy advice in some cases (e.g. free trade follows pretty directly from economic theory) but this advice is often unpopular with special interests. Special interests such as half of the manufacturing industry in the US which was driven into bankruptcy, and the people employed by it who lost their jobs, and the cities such as Detroit that were destroyed by it? Are the working classes a special interest now? "Free trade uber alles" is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about. It is productively wrong - it benefits corporate profits over the citizens of the country. Among the many things it failed to predict were China's meteoric rise and the destruction of the fabric of entire cities in the US.