PROFESSION
TRUDI MAKHAYA: Economists must get real — or their number may be up
'In a blatantly anti-intellectual political climate, economists are directly in the firing line'
The world has had enough of economists. I have been told that economists are too pessimistic about SA. We also stand accused of having pushed a neoliberal agenda that has failed our young democracy. The charge against the profession is global. When Michael Gove declared in the heat of the Brexit campaign that his fellow countrymen and women were tired of experts, his ire was trained on the economists who warned the public that voting to leave the EU would spell economic disaster. It is a statement that earned Gove much ridicule in the mainstream media, but Donald Trump’s victory in the US suggests that economic orthodoxy does not hold sway over popular sentiment. All this comes during what feels like a turning point in history, at least for those who ascribed to a cosmopolitan world order. In a blatantly anti-intellectual political climate, economists are directly in the firing line. The discipline has taken the fall for the Great Recession.Yet if there was ever a time when wise eco...
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