Economic Miseducation

555nnn · Congressional Page Joined: 12 May 2008 Posts: 1

What aspects of the field of economics are left out of economics courses? I often hear from liberals and progressives that there is a large disconnect between classroom economics and what goes on in the real world. What are the differences? I took four economics courses in college, and the general weaknesses I saw were far too much emphasis on simple ideas and the endless number of graphs to represent them, the almost absence of political influence on the economy except for government subsidies and tax cuts, and exclusively ultra conservative non text assigned readings. The concentration on little concepts and their accompanying graphs seemed like a distraction from broader concepts that would have required more inclusion of politics. The first two economics courses I took, especially the first macroeconomics course which should possibly be required for all college students, were very enlightening, but the two upper division courses were very narrow or at least repetitious. Some facts about our economy left out of economics courses from what I remember are: the constant war on workers to suppress wages and worker power, how the court system favors business over labor, lobbying, the freedom big business has to take jobs out of the country to exploit foreign workers more than those at home and the public’s inability to stop this, the totalitarian, single purpose, unethical nature of business, the disproportionate power of the federal reserve on the economy and labor through its manipulation of interest rates and the effect of its leader’s ideology on policy and public perception, the consequences of a class system (there’s only so much to go around, how concentrated wealth leads to dramatic economic fluctuations), how the ruling class was established and how it endures, reliance upon the military to maintain economic control and profits both globally and domestically, sabotage of the economies of countries that defy our exploitive policies, the effects of policy formation groups and think tanks (e.g. the energy industry writes our energy policy which leads to reliance upon oil), how the banking system operates (lending is based mostly on borrowers’ promise to pay not reserves), banks’ influence on policy both at home and abroad via control of capital, that our system more resembles state capitalism than a free market except for workers, the effects of bailouts and subsidies, the consequences of deregulation, shareholder power. What am I missing? Seems like there’s a lot of stuff left out. One meaning of education is political education. We do have the power to change the system despite what we’re led to believe. Keeping the public in the dark is essential in order to maintain the power structure because if the public were led on to the true nature of the system they would try to do something about the corruption instead of blindly patriotically going along with the program. A massive propaganda industry sustains our rip off system, and the political miseducation we absorb throughout our schooling is a main part of the propaganda.

berendei · Congressional Page Joined: 02 May 2008 Posts: 9

Very well said.