Miguel Afonso Caetano<p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Economy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Economy</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Economics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Economics</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/NeoclassicalEconomics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NeoclassicalEconomics</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/IntellectualFraud" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>IntellectualFraud</span></a>: "The question we should be asking, then, is whether there is something wrong with mainstream economics. Mainstream economists should perhaps re-examine their core beliefs, or maybe we need a new “mainstream” altogether.</p><p>To be sure, Krugman notes that “one strand of argument involved parallels with the inflation of the 1970s.” But this only grazes the problem. The real issue is that most of today’s leading mainstream economists were trained in the 1970s, and their worldview – not just the facts, but the theory – was fixed back then. On macroeconomic issues such as inflation, the influences of general equilibrium theory, inflation-unemployment trade-offs, and monetarism remain strong. The legacies of Kenneth Arrow, Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, and Milton Friedman live on.</p><p>That earlier generation’s project was partly scientific, partly political. As “social scientists,” they believed in the power of mathematics, which they borrowed from the celestial mechanics of previous centuries. Politically, they sought to defend capitalism against the Soviet challenge during the Cold War. By uniting these objectives, they fashioned the market-oriented mathematical straitjacket in which today’s mainstream economists were raised – and from which they cannot escape. Yesterday’s Wunderkinder – including Summers and Krugman – are today’s tired old men."</p><p><a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/transitory-inflation-why-mainstream-economics-got-it-wrong-by-james-k-galbraith-2023-11" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">project-syndicate.org/commenta</span><span class="invisible">ry/transitory-inflation-why-mainstream-economics-got-it-wrong-by-james-k-galbraith-2023-11</span></a></p>