How about a little accountability for economists when they mess up? | Dean Baker

There must be a huge change in our attitude to economics. Needlessly complex work merely supporting the status quo must be halted

• Dean Baker is co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research

Suppose our fire department was staffed with out-of-shape incompetents who didn't know how to handle a firehose. That would be really bad news, but it wouldn't be obvious most of the time because we don't often see major fires. The fire department's inadequacy would become apparent only when a major fire hit, and we were left with a vast amount of unnecessary death and destruction. This is essentially the story of modern economics.

The problem is not that modern economics lacks the tools needed to understand the economy. Just as with firefighting, the basics have been well known for a long time. The problem is with the behavior and the incentive structure of the practitioners. There is overwhelming pressure to produce work that supports the status quo (for example, redistributing to the rich), that doesn't question authority, and that is needlessly complex.

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It is easy to extend the list of failings in the economics profession

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