● Economics: The User’s Guide
By Ha-Joon Chang
Review via The Guardian
It is a mark of where we are in our political discourse that even to say “neoclassical economics is not the only school” seems radical. This is where Ha-Joon Chang starts, in a book that is more sober and less effervescent than his bestselling 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, but is just as page-turning.
Since no single economic theory has beaten the others, it follows, Chang writes, that there is no objective truth on which every economist is agreed. Economics can never be a science in the way that physics is; it cannot reach a consensus on its fundamental questions, let alone what the answers are. This isn’t some extended handwringing, a trashing of his discipline dressed up as a mea culpa. Chang isn’t looking for a formula: fundamentally, he argues, economics is politics. As such, we shouldn’t be thinking in terms of an ideal answer – the discussion should never close.
Continue reading →