> Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically.
This is *complete* nonsense. No one pays me to think or say anything. No one pays anyone in my department anything to take a particular position.
For a simple example of what nonsense your claim is: the economist’s definition of rationality is that preferences are (1.) complete and (2.) transitive. That’s it. (See any microeconomics textbook for proof. Sometimes (3.) reflexivity is included, sometimes smaller sets of axioms which imply the others are used instead.)
How “political” is that definition?? Did someone rich guy pay Paul Samuelson or Gerard Debreu or Kenneth Arrow to use that definition 80 years ago? Obviously not - moreover Arrow and Samuelson at least were on the political left! (And I simply don’t know Debreu’s politics. He could have been on the left too.)
Your comment is *entirely uninformed* and *totally unfair* to an entire profession.
This is *complete* nonsense. No one pays me to think or say anything. No one pays anyone in my department anything to take a particular position.
For a simple example of what nonsense your claim is: the economist’s definition of rationality is that preferences are (1.) complete and (2.) transitive. That’s it. (See any microeconomics textbook for proof. Sometimes (3.) reflexivity is included, sometimes smaller sets of axioms which imply the others are used instead.)
How “political” is that definition?? Did someone rich guy pay Paul Samuelson or Gerard Debreu or Kenneth Arrow to use that definition 80 years ago? Obviously not - moreover Arrow and Samuelson at least were on the political left! (And I simply don’t know Debreu’s politics. He could have been on the left too.)
Your comment is *entirely uninformed* and *totally unfair* to an entire profession.