Economics
Over the weekend I started a post about economics, figuring to flesh it out over the next few days, but then a minor internet skirmish on a very similar topic showed up. Great minds and all that . . not. It seems that one Kartik Athreya, who happens to work in the Richmond branch of the Federal Reserve, published a four page (PDF) article titled Economics is hard, which goes into detail about why no one without a PHD in Economics should actually write about economics, or at least not macroeconomics.
I can't help but find this mildly ironic, as the point of my post was going to be how very wrong were the projections of most economists over the last ten years or so, and how wrong we were to expect them to be right. I took only two econ courses in college, and have never claimed any expertise in that area (and few others beyond beer drinking), and don't now. Instead I simply point out that this expert all but proves the claim of elitism so many have espoused in recent years.
In fairness, there is a great deal of disagreement by all those economists with PHDs. It turns out there are different "schools" of econ, three of the most mentioned being the ideas of Keynes, the Chicago school and the Austrian school. While Keynes' ideas, or variations of them, seem to be taught more than the others, as far as predictions about what outcomes a particular policy change will produce, it appears to me the Austrians have the best crystal ball.
At the same time, most of the political decisions in recent years have been based on the writings of Keynes, a firm believer in government spending and especially during economic downturns. Were I were less cynical, I would assume that to mean our legislators have actually studied economics and voted accordingly. Since I'm not, I'll just point out there is nothing in this world politicians like more than spending someone else's money.
I also want to point to a good article by Greg Mankiw, which explains his views on recent events. He's a economics professor at Harvard and though he leans towards Keynes, he also has some real world experience and is usually quite fair in his assessments. What I'd really like to point to though is Shane's thoughts on this - he does, after all, have an undergraduate degree in Economics. Will he share the thoughts he might have?