In a NewScientist review of three books on economic distress (“The global economy is broken, it must work for people, not vice versa,” 3 August 2019), I ran across a curious semi-quote that made me wrinkle my nose:
More than a decade on, people are still hurting. They often can’t find employment, or the scant work they can find offers little security or pay. They have no prospect that their living conditions will be ameliorated. Rightly, many of these people blame the “learneds” who failed to predict the crash. For example, a limo driver told [David Blanchflower, author of Not Working: Where have all the good jobs gone?] that people voted Brexit because “ordinary people had no hope”. How can we have hope when policy-makers haven’t learned from their mistakes?
No doubt they didn’t mean the politicians, but I could not help but see the professional politicians, such as to see Rep Gohmert (R-TX), or Rep Nunes (R-CA), or for that matter, the late Senator Proxmire (D-WI)[1], as a “learned” made me laugh.
And, you know, it’s not that bad a thing to not be an expert in everything. That’s why we have accredited experts and testimony and all that boring thing. Indeed, one of the most important skills of a professional politician is knowing when an “expert” is an expert, and when the expert is just a con-man, or someone with a hidden agenda, and then be able to pick up the salient points of the testimony from that worthwhile expert and implement them in public policy.
So, to a considerable extent, “wonks” like the execrable former Speaker Ryan (R-WI), whose ideology overrode any expertise he might claim to have, were a deterrent to good government; indeed, Republicans of his ilk might claim there is no such thing. They see society and the economy as self-regulating, which is ahistorical.
It was an interesting review to read. It almost made me want to go out and read the books.
1 Senator Proxmire had an annoying habit of handing out his Golden Fleece awards to NASA programs.
