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. . . I have to wonder if WHERE they obtained that training might not have been the Patrice Lamumba School of Economics at Moscow University!"
LOL!!!
It's amazing how many university professors there are, including many of those outside of Economics departments who discuss the subject as though they are "authorities" on it -- esp. History professors -- who still try to explain economics to their students in terms of "producer relationships," which is what Marx taught after all. Somehow they all have missed the revolution in economic thought that began as far back as the 1870's with
Jevons,
Walras, and
Menger; all of whom finally decided to reject the labor theory of value and began to move the study of Economics away from one which placed the producer at the center of economic life and along the road to a social science that sees the consumer as primary, which is where any respectable economist will tell you the focus is today.
Economies are driven by the forces of demand. It's as simple as that! And no matter how much social engineers seek to encourage policies that are meant to control the "relationships of production" -- even those of us who know better still cannot get away from the infection of Marxist terminology -- it's simply not going to work.
My favorite test of one's knowledge of Economics by the way, is to ask someone who considers himself or herself an authority to explain "why recessions happen." And if they can tell me that recessions are necessary for an economy to readjust the flow of investment capital to those enterprises that are most efficient in satisfying actual demand, then I'm prepared to discuss Economics with them. Otherwise I sit back and prepare to hear, sooner or later, some kind of exposition that's going to tell me why this or that group of people don't have good jobs and how some specific policy or set of policies will fix the problem. And my inevitable response that "you're going to have to do less to get more" is almost always greeted with incredulity. They sit back and accuse me of being stuck on Adam Smith when I'm really fixated on a train of economic thought that only begins a hundred years after him and did not really take off until the post-World War II era.
Economies are driven by the forces of demand. It's as simple as that!Bears repeating! So I did!
The basic law of free market economies are as old as mankind.
If I you have something of value that I desire it is far easier and less costly for me to attempt to barter it away from you with something of value that I have and you want than to obtain it by any other means. It has always been thus and always WILL be thus in truly free markets.
The problem, of course, is that there are darned few, if any, of those to be found.