Trump's plan to impose a 20 percent tariff on all imported goods enjoys support from 47 percent of the public and 0 percent of economists.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the current problems with mainstream economics began as the field has bounced between good and bad phases since the days of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, who Murray Rothbard considers the first economist.
As Jonathan Newman explained in an article earlier this year, while no modern economists identify directly with the German Historical School, the philosophy and methodology of Gustav Schmoller won out and now defines much of what we consider "Mainstream economics." Most economic analysis these days is really applied statistics.
Glance at any top economics journal and you'll see paper after paper arguing that government officials ought to restructure markets in various specific ways in order to achieve some economic or social optimum.
The economics profession cheered on as government intervened in important sectors like housing, education, food production, and healthcare.
At the very same time, economists are supporting and even working to expand this interventionist racket; many of them join with politicians and establishment opinion molders to absurdly call all of this "Free market capitalism." The mainstream narrative paints the decades since the Ronald Reagan presidency as a period defined by a total commitment to laissez-faire economics.
Only then do economists scoff at the economic illiteracy that they helped bring about.
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