"We have lost our optimism that the tools of economics can be used to manage the economy,"
GOOD! It was the misplaced 'optimism' of social engineers that created socialist hell-holes in the first place.
Free enterprise is the best way to prosperity.
Imagine economic freedom. Freedom of choice, all caused by rational thought fed objective data. Cool.
"We have lost our optimism that the tools of economics can be used to manage the economy,"
How many remmeber the verbal abuse, the condesencion, the opprobrium heaped on a great man Milton Friedman ini the late 60s and early 70s? The man whose work and theories was dismissed as ridiculuous bny the reigning orthodoxy then (the keynsians)0 is today the establishment voice! And I'm sure, he would suport a trend where political spectacles are taken out of cold factual analysis.