Books, Arts & Manners

The Doomsday Myth, by Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson (Hoover, 142 pp., $16.95)

Economists bearing glad tidings are about as commonplace as stockbrokers who admit bad judgment or government officials who confess there is a problem the government cannot solve given enough money. Economics has long been labeled “the dismal science.” After a few years of graduate study, I began to suspect that that name arose not from the Malthusian conclusions but because of the way economists teach it. Nevertheless, now come forth two unabashedly upbeat economists who may help re-label it “the optimistic science.” Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson systematically and cogently expose the “doom merchants” who lucratively litter bookstore shelves with their prophecies of Armageddon that never come to pass. It may bear out the insight of P. T. Barnum that doomsayers continue to thrive in print and speech when, if they were even partly prescient, there would be no industrialized society left about which to pontificate.

RR

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Robert A. Rogowsky

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The Doomsday Myth, by Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson (Hoover, 142 pp., $16.95)

Economists bearing glad tidings are about as commonplace as stockbrokers who admit bad judgment or government officials who confess there is a problem the government cannot solve given enough money. Economics has long been labeled “the dismal science.” After a few years of graduate study, I began to suspect that that name arose not from the Malthusian conclusions but because of the way economists teach it. Nevertheless, now come forth two unabashedly upbeat economists who may help re-label it “the optimistic science.” Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson systematically and cogently expose the “doom merchants” who lucratively litter bookstore shelves with their prophecies of Armageddon that never come to pass. It may bear out the insight of P. T. Barnum that doomsayers continue to thrive in print and speech when, if they were even partly prescient, there would be no industrialized society left about which to pontificate.