r/TrueReddit • u/Maxwellsdemon17 • 6d ago

Business + Economics Economics teaching has become the Aeroflot of ideas. The discipline is failing students by ignoring the biggest social, political and ecological challenges facing the world today

https://www.ft.com/content/9aabb4a9-d896-4b4c-a40a-1c4477a47a29
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u/Helicase21 6d ago

A lot of this depends on subfield. Obviously 101 level macro isn't going to do a good job but I've had great experiences in agricultural and natural resource econ, even in the context of a not particularly progressive department. 

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u/notapoliticalalt 5d ago

The mantra “all models are wrong, some are useful“ should apply. However, much is the problem with a lot of economics is that many people are not very honest about this fact. Economics certainly has a lot of useful insights, but it’s also not sufficient to make a lot of important decisions. Furthermore, a lot of people who don’t really know much about economics will essentially invoke it, as though ECON 101 can actually explain everything, or enough so, such that they don’t need to elaborate.

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u/plummbob 5d ago

as though ECON 101 can actually explain everything, or enough so, such that they don’t need to elaborate.

Econ 101 is just a algebraic distillation of the fancier calculus dynamics later on. For most problems, it's fine. It's not like the nature of a, say, monopoly is different in econ 101 at it would be in graduate level io

It's not like yiu get to some advanced micro class and learn that budgets don't matter or that choices aren't made on the margin.