In an editorial on the GOP tax bill, Economist Brad DeLong set a standard for separating highly paid, partisan myth pushers from scholars.

“What does it mean to produce the signatures of 100 economists in favor of a given proposition when another 100 will sign their names to the opposite statement?” Applebaum asked on Twitter at the time. “How does Harvard, for example, justify granting tenure to people who purport to work in the same discipline and publicly condemn each other as charlatans? How are ordinary people, let alone members of Congress, supposed to figure out which tenured professors are the serious economists?”

We can now answer that last question. Scholarship is about the pursuit of truth. When scholars find that they have gotten something wrong, they ask themselves why, in order to improve their methodology and possibly get it less wrong in the future. The economists who predicted that tax cuts would spur a rapid increase in investment and sustained growth have now been proven wrong. If they were serious academics committed to their discipline, they would take this as a sign that they have something to learn. Sadly, they have not.

When this standard is applied to the Great Financial Crisis and the response to it, are members of the Economics profession myth pushers or scholars?

Over the last decade, have we experienced the return to self-perpetuating sustained growth they predicted would occur from fiscal stimulus, zero interest rate policies and quantitative easing?

No!

In fact, very few believe we can end accommodative fiscal and monetary policies without slipping into a recession.

If the Economics profession was comprised of scholars, they would ask themselves why they have gotten it so wrong since the outbreak of the acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis in the fall of 2008?

Evidence suggests it is not.  The Queen of England asked the profession how it could have missed seeing the crisis coming.  Rather than ask themselves why this happened in a way that would improve their methodology and perhaps get it less wrong in the future, they offered up an excuse.

As much as the profession hates this question, the reality is it offers a clue into why it was also subsequently wrong with all of its policy recommendations.  The question highlights how unless you understand the cause of the financial crisis, there is no reason to think your policy recommendations will work.

A decade later, the Economics profession still doesn’t have an explanation of the crisis that doesn’t have to ignore a host of inconvenient facts.  Given the DeLong Standard, it is fair to say they are highly paid, partisan myth pushers.