My school offers two main elective history courses for seniors: Government and Economics. Due to scheduling limitations, not many kids are able to take both. I’ve noticed something interesting as the year has progressed. The students who are taking the government course are increasingly endorsing leftist ideologies while the economics students are becoming increasingly right wing.
Greg Mankiw offers his thoughts on the question
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Depends on how the economics are taught and what the mindset of the faculty are. I attended a Florida public university and got the standard Macro and Micro economics courses that almost all undergraduates had to take. If anything, I think the courses promoted statist thinking, but, of course, I was attending a public university, so that was to be expected.
I am currently in the process of reading “Human Action” by von Mises. I have already read a number of his lesser works as well as works by Rothbard and others. My current reading is reinforcing and strengthening what I have already learned. My “true” education in economics, my self study of Austrian texts, has certainly moved my economic viewpoints farther toward the “right”, i.e. towards economic liberty. My “formal” education, i.e. from the university, did nothing for me. Obviously I can’t speak for private school graduates.
With confidence, I can say that the universitys need to scrap their bland, technoistic economics courses and start teaching Praexology 101 and go from there.
Very interesting read. I actually read through all the comments. As hilariously dismaying and ignorant as some of those comments may have been, the internet has shown a light upon them. Thus, it is possible to by argument and ratiocination upbraid them.
I wonder though if this Professor Greg Mankiw, having studied econ undergrad at Princeton and his PhD at MIT, has ever read Mises Human Action? My bet is no. At the beginning of this past summer I talked to a student who was about to begin studying finance and economics at the Wharton School and told him if he wanted to be ahead of his professors on the first day to read over the summer Mises Human Action and also Reminescences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre for an exciting picturesque view.
It’s too bad people don’t understand that economics began as a branch of philosophy. If I were ever to teach introductory economics, my first class would begin with one question on a blackboard: “How can a diamond be worth more than a glass of water?”
The comments on that were quite foolish overall. So bad really that they don’t seem worth approaching.
Someone claimed that the law of returns was an argument for redistribution of income.
The comments on that were quite foolish overall. So bad really that they don’t seem worth approaching.
I think so!
The Southern Indian Marxist poster was hilarious.
Must say I am a right wing economist, graduated, worked for “the man,” now I have two small companies, and pay the taxes, create the money multipliers, and obviously fund many arms of the gov’t from which the left draw their check. Did not understand business until I started a company, struggled, bought , sold , negotiated, etc. Do a better job of teaching the kids how.
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