Matt Stoller wrote a terrific post in which he sought to answer the question:  what is the point of economics.  His answer might surprise you.  He found the point of economics isn’t to actually understand how the economy works, but rather to control how economic policy is set.

He begins by asking

Is it the job of economists to understand the world accurately? The answer is far from clear…. prominent leading economists just get things wrong, big things, with no impact on their standing in the profession. This indifference to empirical results is mirrored in the indifference offered by economists to the claims and arguments of non-economists outside the profession.

Regular readers know I have been making this identical point since before the 2008 acute phase of the Great Financial Crisis.  Macroeconomists have no interest in listening to anyone who isn’t a member of the Priesthood of the Economic PhDs.  This is true regardless of how relevant this non-PhD’s expertise may be to addressing the problem at hand.

But Matt doesn’t stop by making these observations.  He takes them to their logical conclusion.

If the goal of economics were to ascertain truthful views about the world, if economics were as its proponents offer, a ‘science,’ then one would remark on the lack of self-policing within the profession. Of course, given that there is limited self-policing at best and the top practitioners in the field are routinely wrong about fundamental questions, we can conclude that uncovering truth may be an incidental outcome of the practice of economics, but it is certainly not the goal of the discipline.

Wow!!