Economists and Clinton

It is true that Clinton has spurned conventional economics and its associated priesthood of academics who resemble quantum physicists rather than humanists. But wasn’t the message of Clinton’s campaign change, chance, change? And doesn’t the fact that traditional economic theory has failed to cure our recession provide enough reason to try a new approach?

As an impressionable undergraduate at Berkeley, I aspired to become an economist because I saw how clearly basic economic theories can explain the processes of our society. But at the higher levels of study (such as econometrics), economic theories seemed to become less and less attached to the reality of human experience. This led me, as I suspect it also led Reich, to pursue legal training, which I thought provided a better exposure to human problems than the increasingly irrelevant field of modern economics.

PETER E. von HAAM

Sacramento