Throughout the Covid crisis, the world heard very little from the economics profession. Economists love to find fault with governmental policies, but few of them questioned the extreme dirigisme of the way the U.S. and most other governments reacted to events. Few warned that we would suffer from high inflation as a result of spending binges and locking down of much economic activity.
In this Brownstone Institute essay, Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen explore that failure. They write, “Many in the economics profession did see that government policies of the last couple of years would result in high inflation. But most who saw it coming chose not to inform the public or raise the alarm until it was too late.”
Disturbingly, well-known economists took the route of declaring that government policies shouldn’t be questioned, must as Dr. Fauci did. The authors write, “Even as late as September 2021, influential economists sought to silence debate on lockdowns. For example, Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago professor and former chairman of President Obama’s council of economic advisors, stipulated that anyone daring to question economists’ lockdown orthodoxy should be ‘embarrassed’. Such edicts on debate from the profession’s leaders made it prohibitively costly for many to voice their own opinions on Covid policies such as lockdowns and school closures.”
Bhattacharya and Packalen don’t come right out and say it, but I think the explanation is that a great many economists now see their future success as depending on being in the good graces of the government. Become known as a critic of “progressive” government, and your chances of advancement diminish, your access to research dollars goes away, invitations to give paid presentations vanish, and colleagues will shun you. In short, many economists calculate that speaking truth to power is now a personal mistake.
I applaud their conclusion: “Ultimately, whether economists can gain back the public’s trust depends on their honesty in admitting the profession’s failure. The profession needs reform so that dissent from orthodoxy is encouraged and self-censorship seen as a failure to live up to economists’ basic professional obligations.”