Economics must return to its founding principles | Letters

Wouldn't today's economists be better served by reading some economics history rather than relying on their models (Economics in crisis, admits Bank expert, 6 January)? JK Galbraith's classic The Great Crash, 1929 details the things that contribute to a volatile, overheating economy, and in the foreword to the recent reprint, his son James, also an economist, notes the uncanny similarities in the build-up to 2007-08 to those before October 1929, particularly mentioning America, Britain and Iceland. But how far can economists be of help when the model is flawed and we have a government that is determined to sweep away all vestiges of Keynesianism and New Dealism and return our economy to the 19th century?
David Redshaw
Gravesend, Kent

" The reason economics is so poor at predicting is that it was never designed as a science in the first place. The origins of the discipline were as a political and ethical subject, and the founders were explicit about this. Indeed Alfred Marshall (who first fully developed supply and demand analysis) said a pure economic science was a waste of time. What contemporary orthodox economics has done is to patch together a variety of competing political economies, which is why it is contradictory and irrelevant, and is unable to explain why change occurs let alone predict it. It is presented as a science in order to justify largely laissez-faire policies.