Economics is a form of brain damage

Asad Zaman

Environmentalist David Suzuki hits the nail on the head. The number of ways that economic theory systematically blinds one to the realities of the world we live in is almost uncountable. When Henry George’s land tax became widely popular, economists “disappeared” land as a factor of production from economic theories, merging it illegitimately with capital. Money is made to “disappear” by using the quantity theory of money to claim that money is a veil. This makes it impossible to understand how the mechanisms of money creation ensure that the wealthy can become richer at the expense of the rest of us. And the parasitical nature of the finance industry has been covered up by the idea of “wealth creation” – in which wild speculation can double the price of stocks. Financiers then claim to have created wealth, which is a socially valuable activity, instead of being a fraud and deception. The ideas of cut-throat competition, survival of fittest, and social Darwinism have been used to justify a large number of free market activities which harm the masses to make profits for the wealthy. There is no doubt that believing all of the textbook economic theories leads to serious brain damage, as I myself have experienced – and the process of unlearning has been slow and painful.

Source: Real-World Econ Rev, 30 April 2017  https://rwer.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/economics-is-a-form-of-brain-damage/